1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:13,680
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Wait a minute,

2
00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:15,000
Speaker 1: is that a d X seven.

3
00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:20,880
Speaker 2: That is a I know chorus patch on my montage?

4
00:00:22,320 --> 00:00:25,840
Speaker 1: Okay, we got it.

5
00:00:26,079 --> 00:00:31,120
Speaker 3: Nice, Nice, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of

6
00:00:31,240 --> 00:00:35,839
Speaker 3: West Love Supreme. I don't know Steve and why we

7
00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:40,600
Speaker 3: might need another superlative, like, you know, like James Brown

8
00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:42,760
Speaker 3: has the famous Flames. I think we should be like

9
00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:50,080
Speaker 3: the legendary Supreme or you know, something some even more exciting. Yeah,

10
00:00:50,200 --> 00:00:54,840
Speaker 3: you know, because I feel like every episode has yet

11
00:00:54,880 --> 00:01:00,520
Speaker 3: another kind of bucket list that we didn't know that

12
00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:04,920
Speaker 3: we wanted to check off. Steve, I feel like this

13
00:01:04,959 --> 00:01:08,559
Speaker 3: is going to be the Yeah, this is the Steve

14
00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:11,360
Speaker 3: MVP episode. Not to put any pressure on.

15
00:01:11,319 --> 00:01:14,119
Speaker 4: You, I've handled some episodes. I think I had one

16
00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:16,880
Speaker 4: of the top five episodes of last year if you

17
00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:18,880
Speaker 4: want to check the numbers.

18
00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:21,880
Speaker 3: Like this, this is sort of like, you know, we

19
00:01:21,959 --> 00:01:25,000
Speaker 3: had expectations for Lebron to be the guy back when

20
00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:25,920
Speaker 3: in high school and.

21
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:28,319
Speaker 4: All right, well, I want you to do your intro.

22
00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:31,840
Speaker 4: But but yeah, I was just telling honestly before the

23
00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:35,000
Speaker 4: before we started the show, was telling Bob and Sonny

24
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:38,560
Speaker 4: that I do have a radio show on WKCR, Columbia

25
00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:42,600
Speaker 4: University's radio station, and the show that we do is

26
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,360
Speaker 4: about jazz labels, and each episode we cover a different label,

27
00:01:47,360 --> 00:01:49,960
Speaker 4: and quite recently a couple months ago, we did a

28
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:52,480
Speaker 4: three hour episode about tappan Zee Records, which is Bob's

29
00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:56,760
Speaker 4: label under Columbia in the late seventies and eighties and

30
00:01:57,080 --> 00:02:00,000
Speaker 4: into the nineties, I believe, well as part of Warner

31
00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:04,160
Speaker 4: But Tappansz went on for a bit, and I'm dying

32
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:06,600
Speaker 4: to talk directly to the man who started the label

33
00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:09,640
Speaker 4: and who was it was such an influential label and

34
00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:13,880
Speaker 4: it's getting a little lost. So I want to refresh

35
00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:19,119
Speaker 4: our listeners with some like it said in like twenty episodes.

36
00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:22,880
Speaker 3: No, this is amazing, This is amazing. I might I

37
00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:26,720
Speaker 3: might just skip the intro anyway. Fante laya, you guys cool?

38
00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:28,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good.

39
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:28,679
Speaker 1: I'm living.

40
00:02:30,120 --> 00:02:30,600
Speaker 4: What's going on?

41
00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:30,760
Speaker 5: Man?

42
00:02:30,800 --> 00:02:31,320
Speaker 2: Was that? So?

43
00:02:31,919 --> 00:02:35,320
Speaker 3: I will basically say that our guest today, of course,

44
00:02:35,400 --> 00:02:38,640
Speaker 3: is a legendary jazz musician, but I don't think we

45
00:02:38,639 --> 00:02:41,760
Speaker 3: could just reduce him to jazz. Yeah, his music is smooth,

46
00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:45,640
Speaker 3: but we dare not call him smooth jazz. His music

47
00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:50,160
Speaker 3: is hip hop, but you know, we can't call him

48
00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:53,760
Speaker 3: hip hop. But I think probably the most unique character

49
00:02:53,880 --> 00:02:59,480
Speaker 3: trait of our guest today is probably my or not

50
00:02:59,639 --> 00:03:05,400
Speaker 3: my our inability to pinpoint what is he exactly? Is

51
00:03:05,440 --> 00:03:09,160
Speaker 3: he an avant garde artist, Is he a musical provocateur?

52
00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:11,480
Speaker 3: Is he the godfather smooth jazz?

53
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:12,040
Speaker 1: I don't know.

54
00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:16,320
Speaker 3: I will say that probably when the smoke clears and

55
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:22,400
Speaker 3: we start taking a toll of the artists that fall

56
00:03:22,560 --> 00:03:25,320
Speaker 3: under the jazz umbrella, and there's many categories under that,

57
00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:28,640
Speaker 3: I will say that as far as the scope of

58
00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:30,480
Speaker 3: hip hop, and yes, like we kind of come from

59
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:32,560
Speaker 3: a hip hop scope because of our age and whatnot,

60
00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:34,920
Speaker 3: we get to know a lot of these artists through

61
00:03:35,360 --> 00:03:38,000
Speaker 3: the power of sampling, I will say that our guest

62
00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:39,680
Speaker 3: is probably at the top of the list.

63
00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:41,760
Speaker 1: Like I think, hands down he's the.

64
00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:44,680
Speaker 3: King of textures, which is something that you don't necessarily

65
00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:49,720
Speaker 3: hear someone describe another musician, but listening under a hip

66
00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:54,280
Speaker 3: hop context, texture means everything. I also think that our

67
00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:58,600
Speaker 3: guest is probably one of the kings of the perfect

68
00:03:58,640 --> 00:04:04,240
Speaker 3: four bar capture, the ability to transform your new creation

69
00:04:04,400 --> 00:04:05,320
Speaker 3: into something else.

70
00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:08,240
Speaker 1: That's just how adventures he is cut to cut to

71
00:04:08,280 --> 00:04:10,360
Speaker 1: cut to cut, from album to album.

72
00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:14,800
Speaker 3: And I will say that probably one of the best

73
00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:21,200
Speaker 3: engineered artists under the contemporary jazz umbrella, just as sound

74
00:04:21,640 --> 00:04:27,159
Speaker 3: speaks to probably everyone in my generation and beyond, because

75
00:04:27,240 --> 00:04:29,680
Speaker 3: of course, a lot of his music is the foundation

76
00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:33,480
Speaker 3: for some of the best hip hop that I've ever known,

77
00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:36,800
Speaker 3: that we've ever known. And you the listener, you've heard

78
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:40,960
Speaker 3: his music, whether you knew it or not. He is,

79
00:04:42,400 --> 00:04:49,200
Speaker 3: you know, multi nominated, underappreciated, loved, worship, always in demand,

80
00:04:49,720 --> 00:04:54,400
Speaker 3: an absolute legend. This is the Bob James episode of

81
00:04:54,480 --> 00:05:01,200
Speaker 3: Quest Love Supreme. Finally, Man, Yes.

82
00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:04,360
Speaker 2: And I hope that was recorded so I can put.

83
00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:11,520
Speaker 3: I cut it in half, like because I could really, yeah,

84
00:05:11,520 --> 00:05:12,680
Speaker 3: take this for eighteen minutes.

85
00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:16,200
Speaker 4: You mentioned the best engineered. Did you mean engineered or

86
00:05:16,200 --> 00:05:20,440
Speaker 4: did you mean like him engineering at a concept? I mean,

87
00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:24,000
Speaker 4: I'm trying to bring up the name Joe Jorgenson, who

88
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:24,920
Speaker 4: was George.

89
00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:28,200
Speaker 3: Organ and Rudy Like for me, just it's the perfect

90
00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:34,400
Speaker 3: texture of compression and natural sounds to me that I

91
00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:39,760
Speaker 3: think is what attracts my generation to his music, because

92
00:05:39,880 --> 00:05:42,279
Speaker 3: you know, like there's two ways to take in music.

93
00:05:43,400 --> 00:05:45,640
Speaker 3: You know, we come from a generation where you go digging,

94
00:05:46,080 --> 00:05:49,159
Speaker 3: you take the records home. And I mean, with the

95
00:05:49,240 --> 00:05:52,719
Speaker 3: notable exception of Primo and Dyla, I don't know many

96
00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:57,120
Speaker 3: hip hop producers that actually listen and absorb the records,

97
00:05:57,320 --> 00:05:59,440
Speaker 3: like listen to it over and over and over again

98
00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 3: until they actually absorb it. And you know, because a

99
00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:05,880
Speaker 3: lot of us just skip put it on forty five

100
00:06:05,960 --> 00:06:09,200
Speaker 3: no no, no oh, that's something you know you skip around.

101
00:06:09,279 --> 00:06:12,080
Speaker 3: But to me is one of some of the best

102
00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:17,839
Speaker 3: engineered music for the purpose of sampling. But you know, again,

103
00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:20,360
Speaker 3: it's like you can listen to his music under different scopes,

104
00:06:20,440 --> 00:06:23,800
Speaker 3: not just like from a sampling perspective. But that's the

105
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:25,159
Speaker 3: thing you can't category.

106
00:06:25,320 --> 00:06:29,279
Speaker 4: Is it one more thing before? Maybe we let the

107
00:06:29,279 --> 00:06:30,240
Speaker 4: guests speak.

108
00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:33,520
Speaker 1: Right, Let's have a whole episode where he just doesn't

109
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:35,440
Speaker 1: good thing.

110
00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:38,560
Speaker 4: You watch Keyboard Bob, I've smiling.

111
00:06:38,640 --> 00:06:39,800
Speaker 2: I'll just sit here and listen.

112
00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:42,440
Speaker 4: So I think the word that you were missing in

113
00:06:42,480 --> 00:06:44,840
Speaker 4: your intro and why it's so hard to describe what

114
00:06:44,920 --> 00:06:48,040
Speaker 4: he did and what he does is fusion. I think

115
00:06:48,080 --> 00:06:50,240
Speaker 4: that what he did was basically just another version of

116
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:51,840
Speaker 4: fusion jazz.

117
00:06:52,160 --> 00:06:55,640
Speaker 3: But I feel like any description for jazz artist is

118
00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:56,960
Speaker 3: almost like a four letter word.

119
00:06:57,920 --> 00:07:02,440
Speaker 4: Fusion. You know is includes obviously whatever many different things

120
00:07:02,520 --> 00:07:03,480
Speaker 4: that are being fused.

121
00:07:03,960 --> 00:07:09,080
Speaker 3: Well, let's ask him, Bob James, welcome to the show. Finally,

122
00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:13,160
Speaker 3: nineteen minutes later. You know, I know we do it

123
00:07:13,640 --> 00:07:17,080
Speaker 3: if all is said and done and without sort of

124
00:07:17,160 --> 00:07:19,640
Speaker 3: you know, oftentimes artists will and I'm guilty of it,

125
00:07:19,720 --> 00:07:24,520
Speaker 3: like sort of ducking and dodging the accolades like what

126
00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:28,680
Speaker 3: would you like us to know you as? And describing

127
00:07:29,360 --> 00:07:31,280
Speaker 3: your artistry.

128
00:07:31,520 --> 00:07:34,240
Speaker 6: I don't know that I'd probably be the right person

129
00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:39,840
Speaker 6: because so busy doing it, and I never could stay

130
00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:42,400
Speaker 6: in one category for very long. Maybe I was just

131
00:07:43,360 --> 00:07:47,800
Speaker 6: too restless or something. But at one point earlier in

132
00:07:47,840 --> 00:07:52,960
Speaker 6: my career, my wife advised me that we were having

133
00:07:52,960 --> 00:07:56,040
Speaker 6: a conversation about I thought I was spreading myself too

134
00:07:56,120 --> 00:08:00,120
Speaker 6: thin and I should focus more on one thing and

135
00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:01,600
Speaker 6: make up my mind whether I want to be in

136
00:08:01,640 --> 00:08:06,440
Speaker 6: a ranger or a pianist in what genre classical jazz

137
00:08:06,520 --> 00:08:13,160
Speaker 6: or whatever, And she said, stop worrying about it, just

138
00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:17,080
Speaker 6: do what you do, and that maybe what sets you

139
00:08:17,120 --> 00:08:19,240
Speaker 6: apart or makes you different from an other artist is

140
00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:22,200
Speaker 6: that you do a lot of stuff. And so I've

141
00:08:22,280 --> 00:08:25,800
Speaker 6: kind of stayed with that and not attempted to categorize

142
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:30,800
Speaker 6: myself or go too far into one direction, because I

143
00:08:30,880 --> 00:08:35,560
Speaker 6: love the variety and the challenge of it. Right now,

144
00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:39,560
Speaker 6: trying to meet hip hop head on, rather than have

145
00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:42,920
Speaker 6: it happen off to the side, whether they take a

146
00:08:42,960 --> 00:08:44,960
Speaker 6: chunk of me while I'm not there in the room

147
00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:49,760
Speaker 6: to be able to defend myself, it might be good

148
00:08:49,800 --> 00:08:51,480
Speaker 6: to get in there and say, well, wait a minute,

149
00:08:51,480 --> 00:08:53,839
Speaker 6: wait a minute, before you chop me up, let's see

150
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:56,400
Speaker 6: if we just go from beginning.

151
00:08:56,080 --> 00:09:00,400
Speaker 3: To end every now, Okay, So Bob James does a

152
00:09:00,400 --> 00:09:01,080
Speaker 3: lot of stuff.

153
00:09:01,520 --> 00:09:04,040
Speaker 4: The reason why said fusion though, Bob, is because I

154
00:09:04,040 --> 00:09:07,040
Speaker 4: feel like Tapanzee Records and a lot of what you've

155
00:09:07,040 --> 00:09:10,240
Speaker 4: done in your career was not only fusing different types

156
00:09:10,240 --> 00:09:14,480
Speaker 4: of music together, but also really incorporating the place and

157
00:09:14,520 --> 00:09:18,360
Speaker 4: the time period into your music. Like New York City

158
00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:22,360
Speaker 4: in the late seventies and early eighties, and and you know,

159
00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:25,400
Speaker 4: the city and the time period did that play a

160
00:09:25,400 --> 00:09:27,000
Speaker 4: lot into the music.

161
00:09:27,679 --> 00:09:31,840
Speaker 6: I absolutely always have thought that one of the things

162
00:09:31,840 --> 00:09:35,679
Speaker 6: about jazz is it's improvised, so you're giving your feeling

163
00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:38,199
Speaker 6: right at that moment, on that day in that city,

164
00:09:38,280 --> 00:09:41,720
Speaker 6: wherever you are that it definitely does represent the time

165
00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:45,800
Speaker 6: period of what's going on. It should anyway, if we're

166
00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:51,560
Speaker 6: being honest, we're reflecting our time, and that changes. So

167
00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:55,880
Speaker 6: I've resisted when people try to make a definition of

168
00:09:55,920 --> 00:10:00,400
Speaker 6: what jazz is or because it changes. It changed along

169
00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:02,360
Speaker 6: with everything else that's going on around it.

170
00:10:03,240 --> 00:10:09,400
Speaker 4: What was your first musical memory.

171
00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:11,320
Speaker 6: Getting fired from being pianist at a tap dance class

172
00:10:11,360 --> 00:10:12,199
Speaker 6: in my hometown.

173
00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 2: I think I was twelve or something like that.

174
00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:18,600
Speaker 6: And I couldn't keep the beat, so the tap dancers

175
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:23,720
Speaker 6: were tripping and finally the well, actually, the reason why

176
00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:25,280
Speaker 6: I got hired in the first place is I think

177
00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:27,800
Speaker 6: I was the only pianist in the town that they

178
00:10:27,800 --> 00:10:31,520
Speaker 6: could use to play for this tap dance class. I

179
00:10:31,520 --> 00:10:35,600
Speaker 6: guess it's my earliest memory of trying to learn what

180
00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:37,679
Speaker 6: keeping the beat met.

181
00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:41,600
Speaker 3: Still trying who would have the gumption to fire a

182
00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:42,480
Speaker 3: twelve year old?

183
00:10:43,880 --> 00:10:48,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was pretty cold, and I don't exactly remember that,

184
00:10:48,400 --> 00:10:51,400
Speaker 6: but I may have defined that too harshly and they

185
00:10:51,440 --> 00:10:51,720
Speaker 6: may have.

186
00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:54,400
Speaker 2: I actually told me to go home to my mom.

187
00:10:55,559 --> 00:10:57,359
Speaker 1: Passive aggressive firing, Okay.

188
00:10:57,120 --> 00:10:59,240
Speaker 2: You couldn't keep up? Was it with a simple kickball?

189
00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:00,880
Speaker 2: Change of it all. Is it one of those kind

190
00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:05,400
Speaker 2: of classes of beginners. I was just curious. I just

191
00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:07,719
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I'm a Heines girl.

192
00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:10,079
Speaker 4: Was there music around your house growing up?

193
00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:11,520
Speaker 2: Not a whole lot.

194
00:11:12,280 --> 00:11:15,760
Speaker 6: My father was a lawyer, and I lived in a

195
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:19,640
Speaker 6: small town of Missouri where what I did here was

196
00:11:19,640 --> 00:11:23,920
Speaker 6: mostly country music, and my parents didn't really have that

197
00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:28,880
Speaker 6: many records that came close to jazz either. I started

198
00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:32,320
Speaker 6: hearing a little bit and getting intrigued high school baby,

199
00:11:33,559 --> 00:11:38,480
Speaker 6: and I remember kind of liking that, feeling that it

200
00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:44,160
Speaker 6: was improvised, as opposed to what I perceived classical music

201
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:49,400
Speaker 6: being too much practicing, and jazz represented this at that time,

202
00:11:49,559 --> 00:11:53,360
Speaker 6: escape from practicing, so because you could just make it

203
00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:57,560
Speaker 6: up anything that came into your head. And it's only

204
00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:01,920
Speaker 6: been in more recent years that I decided that practicing,

205
00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:06,520
Speaker 6: even somewhere in the relationship to jazz was a good

206
00:12:06,559 --> 00:12:08,559
Speaker 6: thing and not a bad thing.

207
00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:13,559
Speaker 4: So around what year was that when you discovered jazz.

208
00:12:14,679 --> 00:12:18,960
Speaker 6: In the nineteen fifties, in the mid nineteen fifties, and

209
00:12:19,440 --> 00:12:24,640
Speaker 6: I do remember that that was pretty much the highlight

210
00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:29,080
Speaker 6: of the West Coast jazz because I do remember Chet Baker,

211
00:12:29,120 --> 00:12:34,840
Speaker 6: Jerry Mulligan, Dave bru Beck, those names formed or the

212
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:38,520
Speaker 6: style of it, the West Coast style was intriguing to me.

213
00:12:39,520 --> 00:12:43,000
Speaker 6: Only in college did I kind of get more tried

214
00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:43,760
Speaker 6: to get more deep.

215
00:12:44,760 --> 00:12:48,280
Speaker 4: I know, there's this famous story of was it a

216
00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:52,920
Speaker 4: town show or something some kind of competition where the

217
00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:56,120
Speaker 4: bands were being judged by Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones,

218
00:12:56,640 --> 00:12:57,600
Speaker 4: And how.

219
00:12:57,559 --> 00:13:00,600
Speaker 6: About that for a panel to be judging. Yeah, it

220
00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:08,199
Speaker 6: was very pivotal time in my life. I was at

221
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,920
Speaker 6: that time, I just graduated from the University of Michigan,

222
00:13:12,720 --> 00:13:16,240
Speaker 6: and there was a kind of big avant garde group

223
00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:22,200
Speaker 6: of musicians that I became associated with because they needed

224
00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:25,720
Speaker 6: performers who were willing to be really daring and do

225
00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:29,880
Speaker 6: crazy things. That the avant garde world was really out

226
00:13:29,960 --> 00:13:33,040
Speaker 6: at that time, and so I was incorporating some of

227
00:13:33,040 --> 00:13:38,120
Speaker 6: those avant garde things into my jazz trio. And I

228
00:13:38,280 --> 00:13:40,760
Speaker 6: decided to take the trio down to Notre Dame where

229
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:44,200
Speaker 6: this jazz festival was being held, and it was very conventional.

230
00:13:44,679 --> 00:13:49,080
Speaker 6: We were expected to play bebop and I kind of

231
00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:53,120
Speaker 6: deliberately went up against that and started playing some crazy

232
00:13:53,160 --> 00:14:00,120
Speaker 6: stuff along with some bebop and Quincy's here especially. I

233
00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:03,520
Speaker 6: kind of don't remember whether Henry MENSI he was into

234
00:14:03,559 --> 00:14:06,040
Speaker 6: what we did, but Quincy definitely was, and they put

235
00:14:06,080 --> 00:14:08,480
Speaker 6: a smile on his face. Gave me a chance to

236
00:14:08,480 --> 00:14:14,000
Speaker 6: meet him, and we kind of prevailed at that in

237
00:14:14,040 --> 00:14:16,719
Speaker 6: the Winter Circle at the festival, and Quincy signed me

238
00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:21,440
Speaker 6: to record deal. So gave me confidence to move to

239
00:14:21,440 --> 00:14:23,880
Speaker 6: New York and go into the jazz business.

240
00:14:24,160 --> 00:14:26,040
Speaker 2: Did you been to school? Yep.

241
00:14:26,080 --> 00:14:32,880
Speaker 6: I got a master's degree in composition, mostly classical training.

242
00:14:33,480 --> 00:14:39,920
Speaker 6: My jazz training was extracurricular. I'd go into Detroit from

243
00:14:39,920 --> 00:14:43,720
Speaker 6: ann Arburn, look around for a place to sit in.

244
00:14:44,040 --> 00:14:44,240
Speaker 2: Yeah.

245
00:14:44,600 --> 00:14:48,520
Speaker 4: And so Quincy signed you to was it Mercury?

246
00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:49,560
Speaker 2: Yes?

247
00:14:50,280 --> 00:14:53,600
Speaker 6: And we recorded the album in Chicago. He was living there,

248
00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:54,760
Speaker 6: I think at that time.

249
00:14:54,560 --> 00:14:58,800
Speaker 2: And that's where he was. The Mercury was based in Chicago.

250
00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:03,120
Speaker 4: And so this is like the early sixties, right, Yes.

251
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:05,680
Speaker 2: Sixty three, sixty two, sixty two.

252
00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:10,280
Speaker 4: Sixty three, And so I know that at the end

253
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:15,360
Speaker 4: of this small part of the conversation, Quincy eventually recommends

254
00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:17,520
Speaker 4: you or lead you to Creed Taylor, and that gets

255
00:15:17,560 --> 00:15:21,320
Speaker 4: you to CTI. But what happens in between there in

256
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:23,160
Speaker 4: the mid sixties.

257
00:15:24,360 --> 00:15:27,960
Speaker 6: Another big pivotal time was when I got the job

258
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:32,240
Speaker 6: with Saravon, her music director of Pianist nineteen sixty five.

259
00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:33,200
Speaker 4: Wow.

260
00:15:33,680 --> 00:15:37,040
Speaker 6: I had learned that her pianist ron L Bright had

261
00:15:37,280 --> 00:15:41,760
Speaker 6: left and she was looking around, and indirectly Quincy was

262
00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:46,440
Speaker 6: involved in that too, because where I learned that Sarah

263
00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:49,960
Speaker 6: was looking for pianists was at this music copy service

264
00:15:50,040 --> 00:15:54,360
Speaker 6: in Manhattan where I used to hang out and watch

265
00:15:54,400 --> 00:15:57,240
Speaker 6: all the arrangers come in with their charts that music

266
00:15:57,280 --> 00:16:00,720
Speaker 6: needed to be copied. This was before the computer era,

267
00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:05,960
Speaker 6: where the copyists were still copying out departs for the

268
00:16:06,040 --> 00:16:11,720
Speaker 6: musicians in ink. So anyway, uh, yeah, I learned about

269
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:18,240
Speaker 6: this possible job. And I had actually met Sarah very

270
00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:21,800
Speaker 6: briefly once when I was playing with Maiden Ferguson's band

271
00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:27,600
Speaker 6: at Bergland in New York, and Sarah came in to

272
00:16:27,680 --> 00:16:30,120
Speaker 6: the club and made her ask her to come up

273
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:32,480
Speaker 6: to sing, and of course she didn't have any arrangements

274
00:16:32,640 --> 00:16:35,160
Speaker 6: with her, so she couldn't do anything with a big band.

275
00:16:35,880 --> 00:16:40,080
Speaker 6: And that's when my nerves kicked in because the pianist

276
00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:44,840
Speaker 6: always kind of gets the responsibility to have to play,

277
00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:49,440
Speaker 6: and once once she calls out a song, you better

278
00:16:49,520 --> 00:16:52,280
Speaker 6: know it, because she wouldn't have come in with any music,

279
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:57,800
Speaker 6: even for the pianist. I got really, really lucky that

280
00:16:57,800 --> 00:17:03,080
Speaker 6: that night because she said, do you know the Sweetest Sounds?

281
00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:09,520
Speaker 6: And I was able to say fairly quickly, yeah, well

282
00:17:09,600 --> 00:17:15,600
Speaker 6: key this in the jargon of that time. Lets the

283
00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:19,520
Speaker 6: person who asks you about it know that you're that

284
00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:20,240
Speaker 6: you're prepared.

285
00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:22,679
Speaker 2: And at that time, there.

286
00:17:22,600 --> 00:17:27,200
Speaker 6: Was a Broadway musical that had just opened up, and

287
00:17:28,400 --> 00:17:30,840
Speaker 6: the Sweetest Sounds was one of the songs in that musical.

288
00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:35,760
Speaker 6: It was a brand new song by Richard Rodgers. But anyway,

289
00:17:35,880 --> 00:17:38,479
Speaker 6: I was kind of a fan of musical theater, and

290
00:17:38,520 --> 00:17:43,240
Speaker 6: it's just complete coincidence that I knew this song just barely.

291
00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:46,640
Speaker 6: Shoe Sarah was one of the first cover artists sing

292
00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:49,000
Speaker 6: it out of the Broadway show, and so.

293
00:17:50,480 --> 00:17:53,720
Speaker 2: It made an impression on her. And it was at

294
00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:54,920
Speaker 2: least a year or two.

295
00:17:54,920 --> 00:18:00,240
Speaker 6: After that that I responded when she was looking for

296
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:03,920
Speaker 6: a pianist, and she remembered that night and I got

297
00:18:03,960 --> 00:18:09,680
Speaker 6: to John, I have.

298
00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:14,760
Speaker 3: To ask a real amateur jazz question. Now, you know,

299
00:18:14,880 --> 00:18:18,160
Speaker 3: my tenure in school was like in the eighties and nineties,

300
00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:22,200
Speaker 3: so of course I'm in a generation that grew up

301
00:18:22,240 --> 00:18:26,040
Speaker 3: with having access to what they would call a fake book.

302
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:31,600
Speaker 3: Was there any sort of cheat sheety fake books of

303
00:18:31,640 --> 00:18:34,719
Speaker 3: that level back in well, you know those songs are

304
00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:37,720
Speaker 3: also being written in real time, But how does a

305
00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:41,879
Speaker 3: musician learn these repertoires, like you would just have to

306
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:43,560
Speaker 3: go to the store and just buy all the sheet

307
00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:46,800
Speaker 3: music to everything? Or were their fake books out back then?

308
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:51,920
Speaker 6: Yeah, in my memory, there were fake books that kept

309
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 6: getting bigger as a as a tool. You know, we

310
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,960
Speaker 6: have it in our phone. We could look up atty Saw.

311
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:02,240
Speaker 6: I mean, the similar kind of a fake book thing

312
00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:07,240
Speaker 6: that we could do. But at that time, I'm reasonably

313
00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:09,919
Speaker 6: sure that this song was so new that it wouldn't

314
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:12,440
Speaker 6: have been in a fake book anyway, because you jok

315
00:19:12,520 --> 00:19:15,520
Speaker 6: them out. And in Maynard's band, the only thing I

316
00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:18,879
Speaker 6: would have had on the piano was his charts that

317
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,960
Speaker 6: I was playing with him, so that when she came

318
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:27,439
Speaker 6: in unannounced and surprised that if I hadn't known, that

319
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:30,359
Speaker 6: song might have changed my life and I probably wouldn't

320
00:19:30,359 --> 00:19:31,240
Speaker 6: have gotten the gig later.

321
00:19:31,680 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 3: I see now every time we have a jazz artist

322
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:37,840
Speaker 3: on the show, the first thing they want to do

323
00:19:37,920 --> 00:19:40,840
Speaker 3: is sort of dispel not only dispel the myth, but

324
00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:44,960
Speaker 3: sort of dispel it in a kind of a stick

325
00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:50,960
Speaker 3: to a pinataway. Now, in general, if you're moving to

326
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:56,080
Speaker 3: New York City looking to make a living playing this music,

327
00:19:56,240 --> 00:19:59,639
Speaker 3: jazz in particular, you pretty much have to be a

328
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:01,399
Speaker 3: wizard at reading music.

329
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:02,160
Speaker 1: Correct.

330
00:20:03,600 --> 00:20:06,119
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say you have to what's that?

331
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:07,240
Speaker 1: What y'all?

332
00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:10,199
Speaker 6: Well, you know, there were two different approaches to it.

333
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:15,160
Speaker 6: In my case, I think I was pretty clearly thinking

334
00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:18,720
Speaker 6: that the more trending you had, the better, and that

335
00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:21,400
Speaker 6: just meant it increased your odds of getting a gig.

336
00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:24,280
Speaker 6: Some of the gigs were not necessarily going to be

337
00:20:24,320 --> 00:20:27,080
Speaker 6: a jazz gig. You might get a gig playing for

338
00:20:27,200 --> 00:20:31,480
Speaker 6: wedding or whatever, and certain kind of gigs, if you

339
00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:35,800
Speaker 6: couldn't read, you wouldn't get that gig, But certain jazz gigs,

340
00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:37,640
Speaker 6: it didn't make any difference whether you read or not,

341
00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:44,879
Speaker 6: because we all know that the greats that were not readers,

342
00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:49,439
Speaker 6: And that's just a particular way. And I felt also

343
00:20:50,320 --> 00:20:53,600
Speaker 6: to happen for me with Greed Taylor, he was a

344
00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:58,719
Speaker 6: very much his style with his label, had a lot

345
00:20:58,760 --> 00:21:02,360
Speaker 6: of production values and he was adding strings and woodwinds

346
00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:06,720
Speaker 6: and various things to start out with a basic jazz

347
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:10,760
Speaker 6: group and then give it the same kind of production

348
00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 6: details that pop artists had. So he needed arranger to

349
00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:19,919
Speaker 6: do that, and it turned out that he he learned

350
00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 6: that I was qualified to do it after having been

351
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:27,760
Speaker 6: introduced to him by Quincy. So I got that job

352
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,960
Speaker 6: because of my training, and it helped me get the job.

353
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:36,439
Speaker 3: All right, let's take value of the shadows, which maybe

354
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:40,879
Speaker 3: our audience might note that as a group homes the

355
00:21:40,920 --> 00:21:46,439
Speaker 3: realness now value of shadows, which has so much like

356
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:48,679
Speaker 3: stop on a dime, you know, just like all this

357
00:21:48,840 --> 00:21:52,080
Speaker 3: arrangement stuff. So might I believe, like Steve gadd or

358
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:56,600
Speaker 3: it's just mohammet, we're giving these charts and knew exactly

359
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:01,119
Speaker 3: when the like the starts and stops were because I'm

360
00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:05,159
Speaker 3: imagining that you guys can't live in a studio like

361
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,960
Speaker 3: I come from a place where like I've written complete

362
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,160
Speaker 3: albums inside the studio, whereas like I'm assuming that jazz

363
00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:15,040
Speaker 3: musicians have to have this stuff prepared ahead of time.

364
00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:16,640
Speaker 3: You just go to studio and you knock it out

365
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:20,240
Speaker 3: real quick. You don't waste time doing fifteen takes twenty

366
00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 3: takes or whatnot, So like, do they just study the

367
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:26,400
Speaker 3: music or do you give him a cassette the arrangement

368
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:28,840
Speaker 3: ahead of time and they just committed to memory.

369
00:22:30,240 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 6: It was all variations of that over many years. You

370
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 6: mentioned Idris Muhammad in my memory of working with Idris.

371
00:22:40,119 --> 00:22:43,280
Speaker 6: It's been a long time, but Idris may have been

372
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 6: able to read some simple chart, but he was not

373
00:22:46,359 --> 00:22:49,239
Speaker 6: what we would call reader, And so I was going

374
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:52,120
Speaker 6: to hire Adrise. I wouldn't put a big complicated chart

375
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 6: in front of him because even if he did, it

376
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 6: would change his approach to playing, and what I wanted

377
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 6: from him was his his own own, loose, non obedient,

378
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 6: reading a chart kind of style. So in some cases

379
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:17,040
Speaker 6: we were deliberately trying to move away from a kind

380
00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 6: of written approach to the rhythm section at the basic tracks,

381
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 6: because we had started during that era of overdubbing and

382
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 6: not having everybody in the room at the same time.

383
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:32,080
Speaker 6: So for the most part, most of those CTI records,

384
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:35,960
Speaker 6: we would record the rhythm section first and the production

385
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 6: part of it would come afterwards. So I could work

386
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:42,439
Speaker 6: with two different kind of musicians. I could go in

387
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:45,200
Speaker 6: on the rhythm section date and do a very loose

388
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 6: with minimum kind of chart, and then once I had

389
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:55,359
Speaker 6: that basic track, I'd take that home and score the

390
00:23:55,440 --> 00:24:00,399
Speaker 6: more complex stuff or the stuff for the larger orchestra.

391
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:03,920
Speaker 2: And so I guess we did it both ways.

392
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,480
Speaker 6: And for a piece like Value of the Shadows or

393
00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 6: Night on Maull Mountain, some of those things that were

394
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:17,199
Speaker 6: adaptations of classical music, it definitely required a chart and

395
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 6: a musician that could read, and I hired them on

396
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:24,239
Speaker 6: the basis of that. And it wasn't categorical, because the

397
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 6: next day I might want to do something that was

398
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 6: totally loose and just play some blues or whatever, and

399
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 6: then reading would take that music in the wrong direction.

400
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:34,720
Speaker 1: Got it?

401
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:41,200
Speaker 3: In developing your initial sound? Who were you idolizing?

402
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 2: Yeah?

403
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 6: I wasn't too different from most other aspiring jazz pianists

404
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 6: in that I listened a lot to Oscar Peterson and

405
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:54,119
Speaker 6: Bill Eppens, maybe the two that I listened to the most.

406
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,679
Speaker 6: Of course, I tried to listen to everybody, Gardner and

407
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 6: Artatam and on and on, but I I usually came

408
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 6: down to thinking that three of those pianists influenced me

409
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 6: the most. When I was trying to break into the field,

410
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:14,679
Speaker 6: and I would add count Basie to Bill Evans and

411
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 6: Oscar Peterson count Basie just because his minimalism of playing

412
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 6: only a couple of notes eight measures, but he knew

413
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 6: exactly when played them, and I loved that economy of

414
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 6: not playing too. He was sort of the opposite of

415
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 6: Oscar Peterson, and Oscar Peterson had so much chops that

416
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 6: I could I knew I could never do that anywhere

417
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 6: close to the way he did it, so I better

418
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,440
Speaker 6: try to find some other approach.

419
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 3: Is Bill the Is he partly responsible for why the

420
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,960
Speaker 3: Fender Rhodes became your signature sound?

421
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: Or was just.

422
00:25:57,440 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 2: No?

423
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:00,200
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact, I didn't like the way

424
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 6: either Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson played the Fender Rose

425
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 6: and they only played it occasionally, and it always seemed

426
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:11,239
Speaker 6: to me that sounded like they either had to do

427
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 6: it or experimented with it and ended up not liking it.

428
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 6: If you look at their overall recorded repertoire, you won't

429
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 6: find very many Fender Rows tracks from Bill Evans or

430
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 6: Oscar Peterson. And when I heard them play it, both

431
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 6: of them, I hope I'm not being sacrilegious, but they

432
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 6: they hit it too hard, They hit the keys too hard.

433
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 6: They wouldn't change their technique.

434
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 7: They played it like it was an acoustic piano.

435
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can't play that instrument that way because the

436
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 6: acoustic piano has so much more dynamic range. And I

437
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 6: don't know it formed my style at that time because

438
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 6: I was asked to do it. I hadn't gone out

439
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:00,400
Speaker 6: and found Fender Rose on my own. Rudy Vank had

440
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 6: one in his studio and I started being asked to

441
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,639
Speaker 6: play it, and to my ear, I had to change

442
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 6: my technique to make it sound good.

443
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:12,159
Speaker 3: Was it was it like now it's so commonplace, but

444
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 3: in the early sixties when they're when they're developing this instrument, Like,

445
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:19,880
Speaker 3: was it foreign?

446
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: Was it like?

447
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 3: Like, I mean the way that we look at probably

448
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,200
Speaker 3: the way that we're looking at AI technology right now,

449
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:29,919
Speaker 3: Like was it sort of a thing to marvel or

450
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:31,439
Speaker 3: something to master?

451
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 2: Like?

452
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: What were your feelings on it?

453
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 2: It was? It was a gig.

454
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 6: I've also even really I was playing it because because

455
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,640
Speaker 6: I had to. That was my assignment on that particular gig,

456
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 6: because they wanted.

457
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:52,400
Speaker 2: To Okay Bros.

458
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 6: When my heart was still with the acoustic panto until

459
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 6: I began to realize that I was getting identified with

460
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 6: it and that I had some kind of approach that

461
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:06,959
Speaker 6: people were hearing. That almost forced me to take it

462
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 6: more seriously. When my album, the first solo album that

463
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 6: I made for CTI had feel like making Love on it,

464
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 6: and there was a sound that I had used vendor

465
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 6: Rose on ROBERTA Flex because I played piano for her

466
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 6: on her version two, so that sound became very much identified.

467
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 6: That was what nineteen seventy four, I guess in some

468
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 6: ways I felt limited by it because it just had

469
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 6: no matter what you did, there was only one way

470
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 6: that I could make it sound authentic for good.

471
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 3: Okay, So I kind of was starting your discography.

472
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: The period in between.

473
00:28:55,600 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 3: The first album, The Bowld Conceptions that Quincy produced and

474
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 3: your second album Explosions, which really doesn't get discussed enough, and.

475
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 6: It doesn't because if it got discussed too much, I

476
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 6: might not have a career.

477
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 3: The night and day of those two records, I meant

478
00:29:18,280 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty five, like I know by you know,

479
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 3: I know, by like fifty nine sixty like there was

480
00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:29,160
Speaker 3: there is avant garde jazz and whatnot, but your version

481
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 3: of it is way beyond like you know, Coltrane's thing

482
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 3: was more spirituality, and then you know, like the stuff

483
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 3: with the shape of Jazz to Come and all those

484
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 3: things like which I think they're being avant garde with notes,

485
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 3: but you know you're kind of taking at least listening

486
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 3: to those records.

487
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: I mean, if I could be bold to say, and

488
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 1: you know, notwithstanding the.

489
00:29:55,400 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 3: The early like electric records of the sixties, which were

490
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 3: more like demonstration records or that sort of thing, but

491
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 3: like dare I say, like that might have been one

492
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 3: of the very first electronica records, like just in terms

493
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 3: of you using different frequencies and whatnot, Like what made

494
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 3: you go from Night and Day from like bold conceptions

495
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 3: to Explosions.

496
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 6: Well, it actually, in my memory was not totally Night

497
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 6: and Day, because they were kind of all related, and

498
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 6: there were some elements in the Explosions album that I

499
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 6: had already been experimenting around and that had gotten Quincy's attention.

500
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:51,640
Speaker 6: The two classical avant garde composers that participated in the

501
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 6: Explosions album were Robert Ashley and Gordon Muma, and they

502
00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 6: were both exploring different versions of what at that time

503
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 6: was called electronic music, but it was It was a

504
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 6: combination of what was called music concrete, and that was

505
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 6: taking just natural sounds like a train engine or birds

506
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 6: or whatever, and then manipulating them with tape machines. There

507
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 6: was no personal computer. Digital way we look at electronic

508
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 6: music now didn't exist at that time. There was a

509
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 6: lot of tape manipulation, and they did have oscillators, so

510
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 6: there were some very very primitive what we now call

511
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:39,720
Speaker 6: synthesizers that were just beginning.

512
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 2: To be put together. And what I tried to do with.

513
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 6: Explosions is is I guess you could say it was

514
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 6: similar to the way artists us backing track more recently.

515
00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 2: So this electronic tape of or samply something.

516
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 6: Yes, so that's the sample plays or the backing try plays,

517
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 6: and then we would improvise over the top of it

518
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 6: in a more conventional jazz way. And so the two

519
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 6: different elements would clash with each other, and that created

520
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 6: the conflict or the gardeners. And it was all seemed

521
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 6: to be all about pushing boundaries. What are the limits

522
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 6: of what could be called music? A sound organized sound, chaos,

523
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 6: And different people used the different approach. Sometimes it was

524
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 6: anger and thumbing their nose at the audience. The idea

525
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 6: of making an audience happy in the conventional sense or

526
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 6: making them fall in love, they wanted to do the opposite.

527
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:58,760
Speaker 6: They wanted to make them so angry that they'd walk

528
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 6: out of the theater with them. So there was all

529
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 6: variations of that and debate about it and what's meaningful

530
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 6: what isn't. So you had the people that loved it,

531
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 6: but you had as many or more people that hated

532
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 6: it and.

533
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 2: Thought it was noise. And so.

534
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 6: In my youth, I was fascinated by it. I actually

535
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 6: loved it sometimes that and I always felt during that

536
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 6: time that I had the power to change it because

537
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 6: I could play conventional.

538
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 2: Jazz.

539
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 6: I liked to surprise my audience that just when they

540
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 6: thought we were just playing some conventional bebop, all of

541
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 6: a sudden, electric electronic sounds would come in and then

542
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 6: we were suddenly in a completely different world where I'd

543
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 6: be stroking the strings with my hand or getting a

544
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 6: mallet and playing beating on the side of the piano,

545
00:33:55,840 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 6: and we were part of the time seducing the audience

546
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 6: and part of the time confronting them with.

547
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 2: Surprise and making him deal with it.

548
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 3: At that point, were you familiar with like artists of

549
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 3: the time like a Raymond Scott or the Tonto guys

550
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 3: or just any of those experimental synthesizer records.

551
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 6: Yes, I was those two names, I don't remember, but

552
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:33,320
Speaker 6: I was more influenced by the people in the classical

553
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 6: avoc guard world like John Cage and Stockhausen and ghost

554
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 6: people that it was a different kind of experimentation in

555
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 6: the jazz world. Don Ellis, the trumpet player, was also

556
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 6: very involved on avac guarde music at that time, and

557
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 6: there were the mob guys. When the MoG's emphasiser came up,

558
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 6: came into being a little bit later. Actually, by that

559
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 6: time I was sort of using interest frankly, the idea

560
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 6: of making the audience hate me. It started to be

561
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 6: so ob severe that I thought, well, I'll never be

562
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 6: able to make a living if I make.

563
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 3: My You're saying that you were going for more of

564
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 3: like a Stravinsky make the audience hate me thing, or just.

565
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 6: No, because Scherenberg might be a better example. Because Stravinsky's

566
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:36,240
Speaker 6: music people realized fairly quickly that it was just great,

567
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 6: and it was they also rioted, you know, and.

568
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 2: Had a melody.

569
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 6: It had all of the things and it's survived as

570
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:46,840
Speaker 6: a as a real classic, even though the dissonance shocked

571
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 6: people a little bit at the time, but it was

572
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:57,160
Speaker 6: cinematic it. I never never viewed him as av It

573
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 6: was more, we say about.

574
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: A provocateur, musical provocateur.

575
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:09,000
Speaker 6: He had come out of the Impressionist area era when

576
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 6: when the Romantic era of the nineteenth centuries the gradually

577
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 6: they began to get tired of tonal music and the

578
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 6: tonal and conventional dissonance, and so the Impressionist era reveled WC.

579
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:32,359
Speaker 6: It was a blur and where's where's the tonic? So

580
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 6: by Stravinsky's time, he was going further in that direction

581
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 6: and more dissonance and a less provincial tonality, but still

582
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 6: making the attempt to Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't

583
00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 6: think he wanted his audience to hate him like we

584
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 6: were sort of doing at that time. It was it

585
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 6: was fun and a temporary interest for me, just trying

586
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 6: to learn what were the limits. And I learned just

587
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 6: for myself that the limits that I wanted to go

588
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 6: back to were far more conventional and I wasn't really

589
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 6: getting it wasn't reaching my heart. The avant guarde side

590
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 6: of that was a curiosity from my brain. But I

591
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 6: more and more started to like the romantic side, and

592
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 6: probably those four years I spent with Sara Van, she

593
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 6: certainly wouldn't have let me play in the avant guarde.

594
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 1: Kenna, right, Yeah, I was trying to imagine that.

595
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had to really play all the learned the

596
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,360
Speaker 6: standards and not only learn and learned the great voicings

597
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 6: and everything so I could inspire her and that became

598
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 6: my life.

599
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 3: So why did it take almost a decade for you

600
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 3: to get to your third album? Your run of your period,

601
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 3: which you know, for most collectors believe that one is

602
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 3: your They seem to think that's your first record, even

603
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 3: though it's not. But just as the Bob James as

604
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 3: we know, why did it take you to nineteen seventy

605
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:18,280
Speaker 3: four to start?

606
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: You're a part of the.

607
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 6: Story from the after explosions and after I kind of

608
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 6: thinking that it was a dead end for me.

609
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 2: It was immediately after that that I got the job

610
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 2: with Sarah Vong.

611
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 6: That was a four year thing, and by that time

612
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 6: I had given up any notion of being a leader.

613
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 6: When I first came to New York, I sort of

614
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 6: came as the Bob James Trio.

615
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 2: I've thought of.

616
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 6: Myself as a jazz pianist and was thinking about trying

617
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 6: to make a solo career. But I really liked a

618
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:56,040
Speaker 6: job with Sarah being an accompanist, and I started getting

619
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 6: arranging jobs as a result of it, and I liked

620
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 6: that provided a steadier income in New York, and I

621
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 6: was starting to get arranging jobs. And by the time

622
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:11,720
Speaker 6: I got to nineteen seventy when I got the job

623
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 6: to play on Quincy's album Walking in Space, which was

624
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:20,880
Speaker 6: my introduction to Creed Taylor. That gave me the opportunity

625
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 6: for Creed Taylor to see what I could do, that

626
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 6: I could write for large ensembles. And still by that time,

627
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 6: I was not thinking of myself as a solo artist,

628
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 6: and I didn't even think I was going to pursue it.

629
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: How musical was Creed Taylor, Well.

630
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 6: He definitely wasn't one going out in playing an instrument

631
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 6: or conducting or arranging. He did have some training that

632
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,359
Speaker 6: I heard about only by reputation. I never saw him

633
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 6: do it. I think you could describe him as a visionary.

634
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:57,399
Speaker 6: He had a definite idea of how he wanted his

635
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 6: label to have a style, a sound, and a look,

636
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 6: even his packaging and his choice of covers and everything

637
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 6: about it. He had a very strong producer vision and

638
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 6: so his the style of the one element of it

639
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 6: that he talked to me a lout because he wanted

640
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 6: me to be one of the ones helping him realize

641
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 6: his vision. He was a very very passionate fan of

642
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 6: the music and he had his favorites. He had his taste,

643
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 6: and that that form his choices that he made throughout

644
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:36,240
Speaker 6: those years.

645
00:40:36,880 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 3: But does he allow you to really have say, like

646
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 3: I know that you started producing after the four out,

647
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 3: like by yourself, but like, are you allowed to have

648
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:48,840
Speaker 3: say in these first war records?

649
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:49,799
Speaker 2: Definitely did.

650
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 6: I had a lot to say, And you mentioned value

651
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 6: of the shadows right off the bat, which was completely

652
00:40:55,239 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 6: me going as almost as avour guarde as I would

653
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:06,760
Speaker 6: have a project of his where he was a producer.

654
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 6: But he gave me a lot of leeway and the arrangements.

655
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:15,920
Speaker 6: The basic thing that gave me that job early on

656
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 6: working with him was one of his stylistic things was

657
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 6: to take a classical theme that he thought that people

658
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 6: would recognize that and then converted into having jazz performers reinterpreted,

659
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 6: and that became such a trademark for him almost And

660
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 6: when he saw that I was able to work with

661
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 6: classical music and rearrange it and all that, that's led

662
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 6: me down that path with him.

663
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 3: Okay, So take something like A Night on Bald Mountain,

664
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:52,799
Speaker 3: which you know, if you're a Disney fan, you know

665
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 3: that from Fantasia. I'll admit that I met Night on

666
00:41:57,520 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 3: Bald Mountain because it was on side three of Saturday

667
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 3: Night Fever.

668
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 2: You know.

669
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,280
Speaker 1: I was also like seven years old when it came out.

670
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 3: But when you're doing these interpolations of classical music into jazz, one,

671
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 3: are you doing all the arranging? And how many man

672
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:18,879
Speaker 3: hours does it take for you to write each part?

673
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 3: Because you're you know, I'm assuming that you're doing these

674
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 3: arrangements for your brass section, your string sector, like for

675
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:31,120
Speaker 3: one song, how many man hours does it take for

676
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 3: you to write these arrangements out a lot.

677
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:37,319
Speaker 2: I was fast, and you kind of had to be.

678
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 2: I grew up watching the Great Arrangers, and Quincy had

679
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 2: told me about that music copy service that I mentioned

680
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 2: about earlier, and I would go in there and watch

681
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 2: how they would work.

682
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:53,200
Speaker 6: And there were people like Billy buyer's and there were

683
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 6: the people that got a lot of the jobs, and

684
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 6: I saw how they did their scores and how they

685
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 6: set up the scores that would make it easier for

686
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 6: the copyists to copy the parts and well organized and everything,

687
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 6: because very often there were deadlines and we had to

688
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 6: deliver half a dozen charts overnight for the session the

689
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 6: next day. So I learned to be fast, and I

690
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:20,760
Speaker 6: definitely wasn't the fastest, but I could put something together

691
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:26,319
Speaker 6: pretty quickly. And I had studied in college, so the

692
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:28,840
Speaker 6: part of that whole process was getting to know the

693
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 6: range of the instruments and the kind of ways that

694
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 6: you could write for an instrument that would make that

695
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:39,240
Speaker 6: player sound better if you kept it in the right range.

696
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:45,399
Speaker 6: Lots and lots of stuff like that, and the fact

697
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 6: that I could do it allowed pre Taylor to give

698
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 6: me directions depending upon what classical piece he wanted me

699
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 6: to reinterpret. He'd give me some ideas about it, but

700
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:59,879
Speaker 6: then he'd leave me on my own to execute it.

701
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 6: And the nine on Mountain nine on ball Mountain chart

702
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:08,359
Speaker 6: that I did, and Steve Gadd played the drum part,

703
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 6: it was all about featuring him at that time.

704
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 2: I just kind of know him, and I knew he

705
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 2: could read whatever I.

706
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 6: Put in front of him, but keep it in the

707
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 6: spirit of free flowing jazz playing. And even with that arrangement,

708
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 6: we went in first with the rhythm section. I recorded

709
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 6: that and I refined to my score after that, somewhat

710
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 6: based upon the fills that Steve would play. I used

711
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:41,800
Speaker 6: to like to do the vert rather than give Steve

712
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 6: all them notes with all those hits on it, you know,

713
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 6: the sycopatient things. He would just play loose, and I

714
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 6: would him and yeah, and when he would hit those fills,

715
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 6: I would make that the brass you know, no, that

716
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 6: make it sound like he was he was answering the

717
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 6: brea arrangement when actually and some of that stuff he

718
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:08,800
Speaker 6: wrote it and it was tight and in version end version,

719
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 6: because the way he was playing it was loose, you.

720
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.

721
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 3: I knew Steve Gadd was a monster, but in my mind, okay, now,

722
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,240
Speaker 3: it makes total sense that you do your rhythm section first,

723
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 3: and then you build around what your rhythm section does and.

724
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:28,840
Speaker 5: Then yeah, in order that way, there had to be

725
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 5: a pretty specific chart too, because it wasn't just a

726
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 5: simple lead sheet for Steve and the bass player Gary King.

727
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:42,319
Speaker 6: All that I had on that particular piece, it was

728
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 6: a lot was written out, but within that, since we

729
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 6: didn't have a whole brass section in the studio, there

730
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,319
Speaker 6: was a kind of flexibility that we could use to

731
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 6: get the groove happening and to make it so that

732
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 6: it wasn't too too tight and too conservative in the

733
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:02,839
Speaker 6: way we played it. So my memory of what we

734
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 6: were trying to do was both have a be a

735
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 6: very specific chart but also the feel of a loose,

736
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 6: improvised jazz performance.

737
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:18,360
Speaker 3: Your personnel, you know, it reads like a just a

738
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:22,720
Speaker 3: reads like a who's who of just monsters. Of course

739
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,399
Speaker 3: you know they're monster musicians now, but back then I'm

740
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 3: assuming that they were just you know, dudes that played music.

741
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 3: How did you go about gathering the personnels for your record?

742
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 4: Because like it's the cast, it's just and leading into

743
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 4: tap and z. It's just Yes, it's so much about

744
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 4: who's around you. So yeah, I ask you a question, please, sorry.

745
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 3: Yes, So, how did how did you come across like

746
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 3: the Ralph McDonald's of the world, the Grover Washington genius

747
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 3: of the world, the Wayne Yeah, Steve Gary.

748
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 6: I don't think it's any different from what you're world

749
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 6: is now. New York is a great place, and that's

750
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 6: where maybe not quite as dominant as it was in

751
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 6: the nineteen seventies when I was doing my thing, but

752
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:18,399
Speaker 6: everybody comes to New York too, and that's where most

753
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 6: of the gigs were, and by word of mouth, you

754
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:25,760
Speaker 6: start to learn who are the best people. Once I

755
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 6: got onto Retailer's list, he had his favorites, but the

756
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 6: everybody was available to you. You could get George Benson

757
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 6: to play guitar on you could get Ray Brown to

758
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 6: play bass, and you could get whoever you want because

759
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 6: it was New York. And then it just became a

760
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:52,440
Speaker 6: matter of casting. And I loved that whole aspect all

761
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 6: through my life. I love the conversations about who's the

762
00:47:56,800 --> 00:48:02,399
Speaker 6: new guy or gal, who who's going to inspire you?

763
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 6: And so you keep searching, and every month we would

764
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 6: find some new name that got in the door, and

765
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 6: you'd want to use them, and the best of them

766
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 6: became the people that we're talking about now.

767
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:18,799
Speaker 2: As a result of that.

768
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 7: Did you and David Matthews ever collaborate at any time?

769
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 2: No, the other David Matthews.

770
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 6: There there's the Man, but the arranger Dave. It was

771
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 6: one of those things, like Don Sebeski, I rarely was

772
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,359
Speaker 6: around him. If he got the job, I didn't, and

773
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:45,360
Speaker 6: I got the job he didn't, So there was usually

774
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 6: only one of us on any particular project. I did

775
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:52,760
Speaker 6: get hired as a pianist for some of Don Sebeski's stuff,

776
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 6: so I got to know him. But the the other arrangers,

777
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 6: Robert Friedman I remember, and some of these other people

778
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 6: that I knew them by reputation, but rarely it had

779
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:09,760
Speaker 6: a chance to be working on the same project.

780
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 3: All right, just the sequencing of your first album is

781
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 3: just off the chain. And I gotta know whose idea

782
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 3: was it to make such a radical version of in

783
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:27,240
Speaker 3: the Garden, Because you know, when I hear in the Garden,

784
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 3: it's either it's either used for wedding purposes, you know,

785
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 3: it's always the it's always the pre song that's played

786
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:37,799
Speaker 3: right before here comes the Bride or whatever. So I

787
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 3: totally wasn't expecting. It's almost like three things in one,

788
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 3: like you know, it's part rockabillious bluegrass, but it's also

789
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 3: jazzy and it's avant garde, Like do you just tell

790
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 3: us the genesis of that or was it just like

791
00:49:57,560 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 3: roll the tape, I got an idea.

792
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 6: Well, thank you for describing it that way, and even

793
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 6: thank you thank you for remembering it, because I do

794
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 6: sort of remember the day that I came into Cretaylor's

795
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 6: office and talked about wanting to do it, uh, to

796
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 6: do that composition. And we had already discussed a lot

797
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,800
Speaker 6: about his basic theory that if if a jazz artist

798
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,760
Speaker 6: took a classical theme, they would turn it into something else,

799
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 6: and that was part of his stylistic thing.

800
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 2: So the real classical name, which is also.

801
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 6: I'm darning in blank on it now, that I ended

802
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 6: up calling in the Garden came from a very well

803
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 6: known classical piece, And at that time I was using

804
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:51,759
Speaker 6: humor Crackt a lot. The really great studio guitarist but

805
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 6: who had a.

806
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 1: He did dueling banjos right.

807
00:50:55,680 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, deliverance yeah. So he played bad joe guitar,

808
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 6: and he was very authentic in those styles. So I

809
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 6: knew that I could get a kind of raw, almost

810
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 6: country kind of sound out of him and make that

811
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 6: piece eclectic. We didn't know exactly where we were going

812
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,360
Speaker 6: with there's a lot of experimentation in the studio and

813
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 6: crew Taylor gave me the flexibility to experiment with that

814
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 6: and to come up with something unique.

815
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:37,799
Speaker 3: It's almost like, you know what that in particular, if

816
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 3: a jazz artist had a public enemy, like that's the thing, like,

817
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 3: you're so hip hop without The only only person that

818
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 3: I could describe that way was Prince. Like before Prince

819
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 3: purposely started rapping, everything about Prince was hip hop in

820
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 3: terms of like drum programming and all that stuff. But

821
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 3: I mean just the fact that you're mixing all these

822
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 3: genres in one before it actually gets a home or

823
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 3: some sort of identity, is you know, is kind of

824
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 3: mind blowing.

825
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: I mean, at the.

826
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 3: Time, were you nervous or worried about what critics were

827
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 3: going to receive this as your downbeats your you know whatever?

828
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 3: The gods of critics of jazz critics were like, if

829
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 3: you're not following a certain mold of what is deemed

830
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 3: acceptable status quo, are you nervous about this or was

831
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 3: the shield of CTI enough to I think.

832
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 6: I can safely say that I was not nervous about it.

833
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:45,439
Speaker 6: If anything, I was not reluctant to be confrontational and

834
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:50,000
Speaker 6: to not give critics any easy thing to talk about,

835
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 6: and I guess I always had a little bit of

836
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:57,920
Speaker 6: love hate relationship with them, and I got more hate

837
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:02,880
Speaker 6: than I did love times that so I ended up

838
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:05,400
Speaker 6: saying who cares, and I go, it's my job to

839
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 6: do it at their job to say what they think

840
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,799
Speaker 6: about it. And I was not concerned about that at

841
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,840
Speaker 6: that time. Even forget about critics, I was not that

842
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 6: concerned about retailer. He was my boss, but I wanted

843
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 6: to confront him too and not necessarily come in with

844
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 6: exactly what he expected. Bravery, I guess, has always been

845
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:33,719
Speaker 6: something that I feel like you have to stay with

846
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 6: your vision no matter whether people will agree with it

847
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 6: or not. And on the one album we were talking about,

848
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:46,399
Speaker 6: I was not thinking at that time as that as

849
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 6: a solo career album for myself. I didn't think I

850
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:54,399
Speaker 6: would have one, and Creed said it was time because

851
00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:57,400
Speaker 6: I'd done so many projects for him with Grover Washington

852
00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 6: and various other artists. I felt my identity at CTI

853
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:06,400
Speaker 6: was a ranger, and by doing a whole bunch of different,

854
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 6: eclectic kind of stuff, I was hoping to use that

855
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:11,840
Speaker 6: as like an audition to get.

856
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:14,319
Speaker 2: More arranging jobs, and the more of a.

857
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:17,279
Speaker 6: Variety that I could show as an orchestrator, I could

858
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 6: present it to other clients, and it was my good

859
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,759
Speaker 6: fortune that I had some commercial success with it that

860
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 6: I was almost forced into considering a solo career after that.

861
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 6: Can I share with you a little bit about Nautilus

862
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 6: on that same album? Yeah, next, talking so many people

863
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 6: about it and actually confronting with Wu Tank Clan guys

864
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:42,480
Speaker 6: of various.

865
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 2: People about why.

866
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,719
Speaker 6: You know, I kept asking the question why did Nautilists

867
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 6: get sampled by so many people?

868
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 2: What was it?

869
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 6: And I was able to share the story on that

870
00:54:55,040 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 6: same one album you asked about the sequencing US was

871
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:04,520
Speaker 6: the last cut on side B kind of deliberately because

872
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:08,879
Speaker 6: it was almost a throwaway and Pree Taylor knew that

873
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 6: the other cuts would get the attention at that time.

874
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:18,799
Speaker 6: So traditionally with the LP you always made put your

875
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 6: weakest cuts on the center of the last cut on

876
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:23,960
Speaker 6: the side of an album because the grooves were narrower.

877
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 6: You know, you've got your best bass sound on the

878
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:31,839
Speaker 6: on the outside cuts. So nobody paid attention Nautilus and

879
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:36,280
Speaker 6: then Upper ten or fifteen years later, I started hearing

880
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:41,840
Speaker 6: back that that that the hip hop producers were grabbing

881
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,160
Speaker 6: onto it and I could not. I knew it had

882
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 6: a good baseline, and Ice Muhammad playing drums of groove

883
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:53,400
Speaker 6: was there, so I got that, but it just seemed

884
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 6: like there had to be something else about it that

885
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 6: it made it just keep showing up over and over

886
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 6: and still does even to this day. So in a

887
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 6: conversation with Rizza on an interview that he was doing,

888
00:56:09,280 --> 00:56:13,960
Speaker 6: suddenly something clicked in for me that I had kind

889
00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:16,640
Speaker 6: of not been paying attention to it at all. But

890
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:22,240
Speaker 6: it wasn't just a simple rhythm section groove that Price

891
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:25,480
Speaker 6: and Gary King were laying down. I had written a

892
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 6: pretty elaborate string arrangement for fun.

893
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 2: Let Me do It. There was enough budget that.

894
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:35,200
Speaker 6: I could hire a string section and write the arrangement,

895
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 6: and there was this kind of mysterious, ethereal kind of

896
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 6: sound that permeated that track, And if anything, I would

897
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 6: have thought it would have made it less commercial because

898
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:53,840
Speaker 6: it didn't fit in with the other standard funk type

899
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 6: of a string arrangement that I might have written. But

900
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 6: as I've recently talk to the people in the hip

901
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 6: hop community that that keep talking about that as being

902
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:10,840
Speaker 6: one of the essential tracts that have been sampled the most.

903
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:15,320
Speaker 6: I think it might be a combination of that groove

904
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:23,720
Speaker 6: and this almost classical blurry orchestration that's over the top

905
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:24,920
Speaker 6: of the texture.

906
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 5: Yeah.

907
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 3: Texture, it's that's why I say you're the king of textures.

908
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 3: Like and I can't describe it, but it's you know,

909
00:57:33,920 --> 00:57:38,520
Speaker 3: somehow you manage like I know, you don't intentionally say, Okay,

910
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 3: let me create a song that somehow in six years

911
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 3: will hit another generation, like no one thinks that. Like

912
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 3: maybe a musician like me now will think that, like, Okay,

913
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:52,479
Speaker 3: what I do now, maybe twenty years from now it'll

914
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:57,120
Speaker 3: be in vogue. But you know, I think at the

915
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 3: end of the day, you caught a compel selling performance

916
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 3: with musicians that just were tightly locked. And the fact

917
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 3: that you didn't plan it even makes it better because

918
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 3: some of the best success stories and music all come

919
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 3: from people that aren't calculating. Here's lightning in a bottle,

920
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:18,200
Speaker 3: you know, like Michael Jackson trying to follow up thriller

921
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:20,480
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna sell a hundred millionaires, Like you can't.

922
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 3: You can't capture lightning in the bottle that way. It

923
00:58:23,440 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 3: just happens or it doesn't happen.

924
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:29,240
Speaker 2: So yeah, I totally believe it. And that's why I've always.

925
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 6: Tried to just enjoy the process of doing it and

926
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:37,560
Speaker 6: let whatever comes out of that happen. If you're passionate

927
00:58:37,920 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 6: and if you're trying your best to get the best people,

928
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 6: write the best arrangement, play the best solo, just do

929
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:49,280
Speaker 6: your best and keep trying to make the level higher.

930
00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 6: In that way, then you're still enjoying that even if

931
00:58:53,400 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 6: it isn't successful, You've had that pleasure and privilege to

932
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 6: make music and uh, and go through that process.

933
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:13,520
Speaker 3: You know, around eighty seven when you know Peter Piper

934
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:17,440
Speaker 3: is coming out the gate, which you know I'll probably

935
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 3: I mean, you say, Fante, that's probably one of the

936
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:27,600
Speaker 3: first out the gate, uh, Bob Team samples, Yeah yeah yeah,

937
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 3: so eighties yeah yeah yeah. So when when this is

938
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:35,640
Speaker 3: coming out in eighty six, eighty seven and whatnot, what

939
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:38,680
Speaker 3: is your immediate thought of what's happening?

940
00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:42,640
Speaker 6: I believe my first memory was Jesse Jeff and the

941
00:59:42,640 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 6: Fresh Prince.

942
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 8: And they touch a jazz right.

943
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 6: They took my son West yesterday and the way they

944
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 6: did it at that time, because I wasn't following what

945
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 6: was going on.

946
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 2: In hip hop at all?

947
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:00,120
Speaker 6: But I found out about it after the fact and

948
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 6: I listened to it, and yes, I was shocked. What

949
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:06,880
Speaker 6: the heck, you know, because it was just my record

950
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:09,240
Speaker 6: that played. It wasn't it wasn't even a loop or

951
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:13,280
Speaker 6: a chunk, right, and you could hear my melody, my composition.

952
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 2: And suddenly I look at this album and it has

953
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 2: a new title.

954
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 6: They made it into a new song and they call

955
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 6: it something else, and I'm thinking, wait, wait a minute,

956
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:23,440
Speaker 6: you know this is not.

957
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:25,440
Speaker 2: Right, what's going on here?

958
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:28,640
Speaker 6: And one of the first things back then that came

959
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:32,920
Speaker 6: into my mind is, hey, if they can do that,

960
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:40,040
Speaker 6: if Jessie, Jeff and Will Smith could just wrap over

961
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:42,320
Speaker 6: the top of my record, well I'll go out and

962
01:00:42,320 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 6: get myself a Frank Sinatra record and I'll play some

963
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 6: piano over the top of it.

964
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 2: And I'll change the time from you know, from I

965
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 2: left my.

966
01:00:51,240 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 6: Heart, just go I'll call it Bob James something or

967
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:55,520
Speaker 6: other whatever.

968
01:00:56,040 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 1: And I knew you couldst face does that, by the way, So.

969
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 6: Times have changed, but that was my first reaction. And also, but.

970
01:01:08,960 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 3: In your mind, you didn't think like some fourteen year

971
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 3: old or fifteen year old is hearing that and now

972
01:01:17,720 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 3: looking at their parents' record collection, like, wait, I have that,

973
01:01:20,440 --> 01:01:26,120
Speaker 3: and then now you have new fans not yet okay.

974
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:29,120
Speaker 6: Eventually, you know, there's a lot of conversation about it.

975
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 6: And if it had been just a fluke, I would

976
01:01:32,520 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 6: have considered it more as a legal matter. And because

977
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:44,280
Speaker 6: throughout my sort of music business knowledge career, I have

978
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:49,360
Speaker 6: felt that copyrights and the protection of them are our

979
01:01:49,600 --> 01:01:51,840
Speaker 6: most powerful.

980
01:01:51,560 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 2: Weapon against big business.

981
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:57,640
Speaker 6: The copyright itself, the ownership of it, the control of

982
01:01:57,680 --> 01:02:03,720
Speaker 6: it so that that you have some control.

983
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 2: Over your destiny. Is was a very big deal for me.

984
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:09,760
Speaker 6: I fought for it in all of my contracts, and

985
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:13,240
Speaker 6: the only way that you can protect it is is

986
01:02:13,280 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 6: by going to bat for it and not let people

987
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 6: played your eyes or fraudulently steal it.

988
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 2: So so that was really.

989
01:02:22,880 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 6: Basic before I even was aware of what was going

990
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:33,760
Speaker 6: on in the hip hop world, and the whole structure

991
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:37,320
Speaker 6: of the legal thing hadn't happened yet where where you

992
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 6: could figure out a reasonableare way to license and all

993
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 6: those So, yeah, exactly, so you hear that happening, and

994
01:02:46,400 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 6: I owned my recording of Westchester Lady and I and

995
01:02:51,840 --> 01:02:55,920
Speaker 6: the compositions, so I had to fight for it, and

996
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:59,840
Speaker 6: I did, and that sort of started me off and

997
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 6: world that at that time I thought it was a

998
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 6: one off thing and that I would just have to

999
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:07,760
Speaker 6: try to do my best to be compensated properly and

1000
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:12,640
Speaker 6: then go on about my business. But it proved that

1001
01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 6: it wasn't an isolated thing, and not only did the

1002
01:03:17,720 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 6: field get bigger and bigger, but simply my music kept happening.

1003
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:27,760
Speaker 6: So I had to make a decision about how to

1004
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:33,320
Speaker 6: handle that, and eventually, yes, it became a very amazing

1005
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:37,200
Speaker 6: deal that my own music got heard a lot more

1006
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 6: as a result of my name being associated in the

1007
01:03:39,840 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 6: hip hop community. So I ended up being very grateful

1008
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 6: for it, but always mixed feelings.

1009
01:03:47,080 --> 01:03:53,280
Speaker 3: Did you notice an immediate paradigm shift and reaction? Whereas like,

1010
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:55,840
Speaker 3: if you start the intro to Nautilus back in nineteen

1011
01:03:55,840 --> 01:04:00,480
Speaker 3: seventy four, it probably wouldn't elicit the screams of oh

1012
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:04,280
Speaker 3: shit like that. I'm certain that happened at Blue Note

1013
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 3: last week when you played there.

1014
01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:13,120
Speaker 6: Yes, and as drastic change has happened, I have so

1015
01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 6: much appreciation and new respect, new desire to confront.

1016
01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 2: This whole phenomenon.

1017
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:29,840
Speaker 6: I want, as a copyright holder and as a composer

1018
01:04:29,880 --> 01:04:33,280
Speaker 6: who has fought hard to keep the rights to my music,

1019
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:35,840
Speaker 6: I want to be one of the people in the

1020
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 6: music community that educates young people to learn about that,

1021
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:45,520
Speaker 6: to learn about the business, to learn that these creations

1022
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:49,160
Speaker 6: need to be protected and they need to be identified

1023
01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:54,080
Speaker 6: in the right way and entered into the legal part

1024
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:58,919
Speaker 6: of the music business in a legitimate way. So I've

1025
01:04:59,120 --> 01:04:59,920
Speaker 6: kept fighting for that.

1026
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:01,440
Speaker 2: Uh.

1027
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 6: But as I have learned more about the sample usage,

1028
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:13,640
Speaker 6: I confronted Rizza and I sort of actually confronted DJ

1029
01:05:13,800 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 6: j Jeff too, And there was a new cut on

1030
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 6: my album be coming out in the spring that is

1031
01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:26,880
Speaker 6: a collaboration with djj Jeff where it's like let by

1032
01:05:26,920 --> 01:05:28,920
Speaker 6: Gones be by Gones were.

1033
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 2: Never were in bed together with the track.

1034
01:05:33,360 --> 01:05:36,520
Speaker 6: You know, we collaborated, and I'm very happy that we're

1035
01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 6: able to do that, and it demonstrates that we're all

1036
01:05:42,200 --> 01:05:46,000
Speaker 6: in the music business together. But in attempting to actually

1037
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 6: confront this issue for me, which is when they took

1038
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 6: Nautilus or take Me to the Marty Ground and redid

1039
01:05:54,600 --> 01:06:00,080
Speaker 6: it or used it, it was my creativity that it

1040
01:06:00,600 --> 01:06:03,960
Speaker 6: was in this chunk or in this recording, and I

1041
01:06:04,080 --> 01:06:08,040
Speaker 6: was not in the studio to defend myself artistically.

1042
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:10,680
Speaker 2: And as I began to hear my music being.

1043
01:06:10,520 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 6: Sample more and more the chunks of it were taken

1044
01:06:13,880 --> 01:06:19,040
Speaker 6: in all kinds of different ways, manipulated more drastically, tempo chains,

1045
01:06:19,160 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 6: speed sped up, slowed down the story.

1046
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:26,600
Speaker 2: Only I didn't have any control over.

1047
01:06:26,480 --> 01:06:29,000
Speaker 1: The creativity right right.

1048
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:31,240
Speaker 6: I'm not there, so they do whatever they want. So

1049
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 6: I began to think if I could be in the

1050
01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:36,919
Speaker 6: same room doing my thing while they did their thing,

1051
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 6: a different result could come out of it, where I

1052
01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:42,840
Speaker 6: would actually be at least be able to say, well,

1053
01:06:42,840 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 6: wait a.

1054
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,320
Speaker 2: Minute, don't change this, or something like that.

1055
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 6: So or five days, two weeks ago, I was in

1056
01:06:52,320 --> 01:06:56,440
Speaker 6: Riz's studio and we did pretty much exactly that. He

1057
01:06:56,520 --> 01:06:59,120
Speaker 6: did his thing and I did my thing, And a

1058
01:06:59,120 --> 01:07:02,560
Speaker 6: couple of times I would do a kind of conventional

1059
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 6: jazz melodic thing, or a bassline thing or something like that,

1060
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:12,360
Speaker 6: and he would hear some very small chunk of it

1061
01:07:12,840 --> 01:07:15,720
Speaker 6: and he would ask his engineer, stops right there and

1062
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:21,160
Speaker 6: take just these two beats, And suddenly my conventional melody

1063
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:27,480
Speaker 6: had become some completely new rhythm that I wouldn't have

1064
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:29,600
Speaker 6: thought of in a million years.

1065
01:07:30,200 --> 01:07:32,080
Speaker 2: And now we're confronting each other.

1066
01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 6: Either I have to be strong enough to say, you know,

1067
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:39,360
Speaker 6: stay away from that, or or go along with it.

1068
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:44,600
Speaker 3: Fante, are you thinking about the guitar center beat right now?

1069
01:07:48,520 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 7: I hope it's not that I think, but the guitars

1070
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:55,080
Speaker 7: that would beat that's a whole other, you know.

1071
01:07:55,240 --> 01:07:58,880
Speaker 3: For me, For me a person who takes that, it

1072
01:07:58,920 --> 01:08:02,600
Speaker 3: makes I feel like someone's gonna flip it, like either

1073
01:08:02,800 --> 01:08:03,920
Speaker 3: vitamin D or something.

1074
01:08:04,720 --> 01:08:05,360
Speaker 4: You make it hard.

1075
01:08:06,200 --> 01:08:07,480
Speaker 1: It's inside joke.

1076
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:12,160
Speaker 3: It's one of his most like unorthodox creations I've ever

1077
01:08:12,160 --> 01:08:15,160
Speaker 3: heard of my life. Ze When I when I heard

1078
01:08:15,160 --> 01:08:17,960
Speaker 3: you two were collaborating, the first thing I thought about was, okay,

1079
01:08:18,000 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 3: the guitar set beat, Bob.

1080
01:08:21,240 --> 01:08:25,080
Speaker 7: When you recall, do you remember the reasons why you

1081
01:08:25,240 --> 01:08:27,559
Speaker 7: cleared Dayton off my puncher but you didn't clear the

1082
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:28,880
Speaker 7: Flowers record for ghost Face?

1083
01:08:28,920 --> 01:08:33,040
Speaker 2: Do you remember, uh, the reason for that? I do remember.

1084
01:08:33,040 --> 01:08:36,200
Speaker 6: In those days, we were trying to create a kind

1085
01:08:36,200 --> 01:08:41,719
Speaker 6: of formula which almost never worked, because every new creation

1086
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:46,000
Speaker 6: is different and every circumstances different. But I tried to

1087
01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:50,880
Speaker 6: identify it in the amount of my actual recording that

1088
01:08:51,040 --> 01:08:53,840
Speaker 6: was used, and if it was just a little chunk

1089
01:08:54,040 --> 01:08:58,800
Speaker 6: that only occupied, you know, ten percent. Tried to base

1090
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 6: the licensing fee on the the prominence of my music

1091
01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 6: in the track, and if my baseline or my melody

1092
01:09:09,640 --> 01:09:12,400
Speaker 6: was prominent all the way through the track. It's essentially

1093
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:16,040
Speaker 6: my composition that I have, that I own, and that

1094
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:19,439
Speaker 6: I own that copyright, and they're using it from beginning

1095
01:09:19,439 --> 01:09:26,639
Speaker 6: to end. I always was pretty firm and rigid about no,

1096
01:09:26,720 --> 01:09:30,280
Speaker 6: I'm not giving that up, and I don't. I don't

1097
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:34,080
Speaker 6: think any composer who's proud of the ownership.

1098
01:09:33,560 --> 01:09:37,360
Speaker 2: Of their creation would ever want to give that up.

1099
01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:38,360
Speaker 2: Just say I.

1100
01:09:38,360 --> 01:09:40,120
Speaker 7: When you say not giving it up, you mean not

1101
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:42,840
Speaker 7: giving up any publishing on it, or just not letting

1102
01:09:42,840 --> 01:09:44,320
Speaker 7: them use it period.

1103
01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:48,400
Speaker 6: Well either version, yes, not using letting them use the

1104
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:51,600
Speaker 6: period unless they license it properly, if they license it,

1105
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:56,160
Speaker 6: and and to get a license to change my music

1106
01:09:56,479 --> 01:09:58,120
Speaker 6: when they use it from beginning to end.

1107
01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 2: U why why would I? Why would I? Why would

1108
01:10:06,439 --> 01:10:10,559
Speaker 2: any of you agree to do that? So here here

1109
01:10:10,600 --> 01:10:12,320
Speaker 2: you've got this.

1110
01:10:12,800 --> 01:10:15,559
Speaker 7: Understand Yeah, I think yeah, Well you asked the question,

1111
01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:16,760
Speaker 7: whyle we any of us would do that?

1112
01:10:16,800 --> 01:10:18,640
Speaker 2: I think definitely, it has to be.

1113
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:21,640
Speaker 7: It has to be you know, you have to be

1114
01:10:21,680 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 7: compensated and the business has to be worked out. I

1115
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:26,519
Speaker 7: just know, for me as a hip hop fan, there

1116
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:28,960
Speaker 7: are so many records that I never would have listened

1117
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:30,840
Speaker 7: to if it were not for hip hop. Like I

1118
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:33,760
Speaker 7: never would have went and listened to you know, your

1119
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:37,519
Speaker 7: first Floor, Well not first for but your album's one, two.

1120
01:10:37,320 --> 01:10:37,880
Speaker 4: Three, and four.

1121
01:10:38,320 --> 01:10:40,280
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, Like, I never would have

1122
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:42,679
Speaker 7: went back to those records had I not heard them

1123
01:10:42,720 --> 01:10:45,439
Speaker 7: in this context now, you know what I mean. So

1124
01:10:45,760 --> 01:10:48,400
Speaker 7: for me now, I look at it as just you know,

1125
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:50,920
Speaker 7: kind of just planting that seed and putting it in

1126
01:10:50,960 --> 01:10:53,599
Speaker 7: a context that we may not understand, but the generation

1127
01:10:53,720 --> 01:10:56,639
Speaker 7: after us they may hear it, and you know it goes.

1128
01:10:57,360 --> 01:10:59,719
Speaker 7: You know, it's pretty much I look at what sampling

1129
01:10:59,880 --> 01:11:01,160
Speaker 7: was back for us back then.

1130
01:11:01,680 --> 01:11:02,799
Speaker 1: It's like what mean.

1131
01:11:02,720 --> 01:11:04,920
Speaker 2: Culture is now in the Internet, you know.

1132
01:11:04,920 --> 01:11:05,400
Speaker 4: What I'm saying.

1133
01:11:05,560 --> 01:11:09,760
Speaker 7: Like my son, you know, he you know, watched the

1134
01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:13,040
Speaker 7: Wire and all because the gift there's a gift of

1135
01:11:13,080 --> 01:11:16,360
Speaker 7: webade that's like being used as a meme a million times, right,

1136
01:11:16,439 --> 01:11:17,400
Speaker 7: But to him.

1137
01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:18,920
Speaker 4: It was just oh my god.

1138
01:11:19,040 --> 01:11:21,640
Speaker 7: So that's where that came from, like, you know, this

1139
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:23,000
Speaker 7: is a year old.

1140
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:27,599
Speaker 1: Old that's right it that is the new sampling. Yeah,

1141
01:11:27,800 --> 01:11:29,320
Speaker 1: it's like that is crazy, you.

1142
01:11:29,280 --> 01:11:32,759
Speaker 6: Know, right in defense of the way this thing started

1143
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:37,120
Speaker 6: to come together in the legitimatizing of licensing and all that,

1144
01:11:38,160 --> 01:11:41,840
Speaker 6: any of the biggest samples of my music, such as

1145
01:11:41,840 --> 01:11:45,479
Speaker 6: Peter Piper, I didn't find out about until even two

1146
01:11:45,520 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 6: three four years later, after the thing was too late

1147
01:11:49,840 --> 01:11:53,960
Speaker 6: and I suffered even if I wanted to confront, the

1148
01:11:54,000 --> 01:11:57,320
Speaker 6: statute of limitations prevented me from really being able to

1149
01:11:57,320 --> 01:11:59,600
Speaker 6: do what I wanted to do in some of the

1150
01:11:59,640 --> 01:12:01,320
Speaker 6: cases to protect my copyright.

1151
01:12:01,680 --> 01:12:02,960
Speaker 2: Couldn't couldn't do it.

1152
01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:06,760
Speaker 6: Quest I've just called it the Wild West, and yes

1153
01:12:07,400 --> 01:12:11,040
Speaker 6: it was during that time. You fend for yourself and

1154
01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:13,720
Speaker 6: you don't know the history of how it's going to

1155
01:12:13,800 --> 01:12:16,559
Speaker 6: turn out. If I had known that, I would have

1156
01:12:16,840 --> 01:12:19,800
Speaker 6: had so much respect from the whole hip hop community,

1157
01:12:19,920 --> 01:12:23,080
Speaker 6: and they treat me with so much dignity. It makes

1158
01:12:23,120 --> 01:12:26,439
Speaker 6: me so happy and proud that I'm a part of it.

1159
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:30,320
Speaker 6: And I know that I have gotten a lot from

1160
01:12:30,680 --> 01:12:32,479
Speaker 6: the fact that it historically happened.

1161
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:35,280
Speaker 2: But when it was the wild West, when all that

1162
01:12:35,280 --> 01:12:36,160
Speaker 2: stuff was going on.

1163
01:12:36,640 --> 01:12:38,880
Speaker 6: I had no idea, and I was fighting for my

1164
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:42,519
Speaker 6: own image as a jazz artist and had enough time

1165
01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:45,760
Speaker 6: with that, let alone have a hard time holding on

1166
01:12:45,840 --> 01:12:47,240
Speaker 6: to my own composition.

1167
01:12:48,000 --> 01:12:55,240
Speaker 3: I understand are there certain songs that you favor of

1168
01:12:55,280 --> 01:12:58,120
Speaker 3: your usage? Like for me, I feel like DJ Premiere

1169
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:04,720
Speaker 3: is probably the most ideal person to have utilized your

1170
01:13:04,720 --> 01:13:08,360
Speaker 3: work where it's not just straight up jacking it, but

1171
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:12,000
Speaker 3: it's like the way he does it is amazing. But

1172
01:13:12,200 --> 01:13:14,479
Speaker 3: like for you, do you have favorites of like, oh,

1173
01:13:14,520 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 3: that was clever or that sort of thing.

1174
01:13:16,800 --> 01:13:19,559
Speaker 6: A little bit by the way. I really loved meeting

1175
01:13:19,600 --> 01:13:22,960
Speaker 6: him last week. He had come a year ago, but

1176
01:13:23,080 --> 01:13:25,680
Speaker 6: finally had a chance to meet him and talk with

1177
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:28,639
Speaker 6: him a little bit last week at the Blue No such.

1178
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:30,800
Speaker 2: A cool guy, and.

1179
01:13:32,560 --> 01:13:36,040
Speaker 6: I am embarrassed in jum ways to admit that I

1180
01:13:36,080 --> 01:13:38,519
Speaker 6: still don't listen to that much hip hop music.

1181
01:13:39,000 --> 01:13:40,120
Speaker 1: I don't guess what neither do.

1182
01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:46,879
Speaker 6: I'm not well versed to talk about it. But because

1183
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:50,200
Speaker 6: of the opportunity to be up on the stage with

1184
01:13:50,360 --> 01:13:56,040
Speaker 6: Talib Khali and his other guests, finally I got some

1185
01:13:56,360 --> 01:14:00,360
Speaker 6: very great insight into the performance of rap and hip

1186
01:14:00,360 --> 01:14:03,559
Speaker 6: hop and the way it feels like jazz when I'm

1187
01:14:03,960 --> 01:14:07,639
Speaker 6: on the stage, and the skill and that the spirit

1188
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:10,720
Speaker 6: of it that I had not paid attention to and

1189
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:15,160
Speaker 6: listening to the recordings, but being there with him was fantastic.

1190
01:14:15,880 --> 01:14:19,880
Speaker 3: Let me let me explain to our listeners. So basically,

1191
01:14:20,160 --> 01:14:24,960
Speaker 3: mister James did a residency, a three night residency at

1192
01:14:25,000 --> 01:14:28,160
Speaker 3: the Blue Note in New York City with to live

1193
01:14:28,240 --> 01:14:34,479
Speaker 3: quality black thought was there, rock him was there? Yeah,

1194
01:14:34,600 --> 01:14:38,840
Speaker 3: Like just basically, you know it, is this the first

1195
01:14:38,840 --> 01:14:42,240
Speaker 3: time that you finally had a meeting of the minds

1196
01:14:42,280 --> 01:14:45,719
Speaker 3: between yourself and and hip hop MC's and a band

1197
01:14:45,760 --> 01:14:47,679
Speaker 3: that knew how to make this happen.

1198
01:14:48,000 --> 01:14:52,760
Speaker 6: I did the same thing with Talib last year. That

1199
01:14:53,120 --> 01:14:57,840
Speaker 6: was only the other time, and I really liked that

1200
01:14:58,680 --> 01:15:02,840
Speaker 6: in a way of getting and know in real time

1201
01:15:03,320 --> 01:15:07,880
Speaker 6: the music's happening. The two starts and I'm playing right

1202
01:15:07,920 --> 01:15:11,880
Speaker 6: along with him, and and when Rakiema was was playing

1203
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:15,960
Speaker 6: his UH version where he had set well my peak Shambouzi,

1204
01:15:21,160 --> 01:15:25,919
Speaker 6: and it made me smile because I remember UH percussion

1205
01:15:25,920 --> 01:15:27,920
Speaker 6: players that I used to work with all the time,

1206
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:32,200
Speaker 6: Doc Gibbs, and Doc Gibbs had given me the title shambousie,

1207
01:15:32,600 --> 01:15:36,040
Speaker 6: which was the kind of part of his vocabulary, and

1208
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:38,599
Speaker 6: it just brought back a whole bunch of memories. And

1209
01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:42,400
Speaker 6: this again, this, this, that was just the intro for me.

1210
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:47,240
Speaker 6: The melody or the main part of that song. Rackim

1211
01:15:47,240 --> 01:15:50,439
Speaker 6: didn't use it at all. It was just those chords

1212
01:15:50,439 --> 01:15:55,679
Speaker 6: of the intro. Nevertheless, I loved the way he performed

1213
01:15:55,720 --> 01:16:00,240
Speaker 6: on stage with such confidence and charisma and and made

1214
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:04,080
Speaker 6: me proud, happy and smiling that he had chosen my

1215
01:16:05,640 --> 01:16:10,840
Speaker 6: you know, as something to create a new piece out

1216
01:16:10,880 --> 01:16:11,040
Speaker 6: of it.

1217
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:14,360
Speaker 7: What were your thoughts on Everyday People or People every

1218
01:16:14,400 --> 01:16:17,080
Speaker 7: Day by rest of development, because I thought that was

1219
01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:19,960
Speaker 7: just a genie that taking that little piece, Like to me,

1220
01:16:20,000 --> 01:16:21,479
Speaker 7: that was Jens, Well, we your thoughts on.

1221
01:16:21,439 --> 01:16:26,840
Speaker 6: It very very complicated from the business end of it,

1222
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:31,799
Speaker 6: and actually even from it was another example of something

1223
01:16:31,800 --> 01:16:34,800
Speaker 6: that I was not paying attention to know that my

1224
01:16:34,960 --> 01:16:38,120
Speaker 6: sample had even been used until way after the fact,

1225
01:16:38,439 --> 01:16:41,120
Speaker 6: oh wow, way after it had become a big hit.

1226
01:16:41,800 --> 01:16:45,360
Speaker 6: So it came to me late in the game. And

1227
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:50,360
Speaker 6: what had happened was People every Day had been released

1228
01:16:50,560 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 6: as a single without my sample on it. The first

1229
01:16:53,880 --> 01:16:58,360
Speaker 6: release out didn't have my recording on it and kind

1230
01:16:58,360 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 6: of didn't go anywhere, and they kept working with it,

1231
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:05,519
Speaker 6: did a new mix which ended up being called a

1232
01:17:05,560 --> 01:17:10,840
Speaker 6: metamorphosis mix, did add my sample, and that became a

1233
01:17:10,840 --> 01:17:11,320
Speaker 6: big hit.

1234
01:17:12,400 --> 01:17:16,160
Speaker 2: And so quite clearly I knew that my.

1235
01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:19,920
Speaker 6: Sample had made a difference in that record, but what

1236
01:17:20,240 --> 01:17:23,240
Speaker 6: we had did not know at the time and until

1237
01:17:23,479 --> 01:17:27,639
Speaker 6: it got retigious and kind of got a little bit ugly,

1238
01:17:27,720 --> 01:17:33,360
Speaker 6: shall we say, series. And this may or may not

1239
01:17:33,439 --> 01:17:36,120
Speaker 6: have had anything to do with their management, but more

1240
01:17:36,120 --> 01:17:41,000
Speaker 6: of the record company's management. When the royalties came in,

1241
01:17:42,080 --> 01:17:46,400
Speaker 6: they somehow or other got channeled into the other version

1242
01:17:46,800 --> 01:17:50,760
Speaker 6: of U did not have my sample in it, so

1243
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:55,240
Speaker 6: the royalties did not come my way and after a

1244
01:17:55,240 --> 01:17:58,839
Speaker 6: long period of time, and it was a very significant difference.

1245
01:17:59,680 --> 01:18:02,320
Speaker 3: So that that's why they had to identify the metamorphosis

1246
01:18:02,360 --> 01:18:05,679
Speaker 3: remix every time I see it used in public.

1247
01:18:05,960 --> 01:18:08,240
Speaker 2: But even though they did some.

1248
01:18:09,920 --> 01:18:13,760
Speaker 6: Unbeknownst to me and in the final I couldn't prove

1249
01:18:13,760 --> 01:18:17,680
Speaker 6: it anyway. Uh, it got channeled wrong, and it took

1250
01:18:17,800 --> 01:18:20,800
Speaker 6: us a long time before we figured out, well, why

1251
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:25,760
Speaker 6: is this statement for the other version so huge and

1252
01:18:25,840 --> 01:18:29,080
Speaker 6: the statement for metamorphosis mixed nothing?

1253
01:18:29,560 --> 01:18:34,920
Speaker 3: Because no one wants to write Metamorphosis mix. I assure you, yeah,

1254
01:18:34,920 --> 01:18:38,120
Speaker 3: I assure you, ninety nine percent of the time, if

1255
01:18:38,120 --> 01:18:42,400
Speaker 3: someone's playing that song, they're they're definitely playing your version in.

1256
01:18:42,400 --> 01:18:46,599
Speaker 6: That TP appearances and everything else. That was the version

1257
01:18:46,960 --> 01:18:51,920
Speaker 6: that became a hit. But I probably shouldn't even be

1258
01:18:51,960 --> 01:18:55,799
Speaker 6: talking about details of this because there was a settlement

1259
01:18:55,840 --> 01:18:58,280
Speaker 6: that we finally reached and it was.

1260
01:18:58,240 --> 01:19:01,400
Speaker 2: Not particularly good. But so I don't have good memories

1261
01:19:01,479 --> 01:19:02,840
Speaker 2: about that, Let's put it that way.

1262
01:19:03,560 --> 01:19:07,000
Speaker 7: You have good memories about Taxi that Angela.

1263
01:19:08,439 --> 01:19:12,320
Speaker 6: Well, of course, that's all good news for me, you know,

1264
01:19:13,040 --> 01:19:16,840
Speaker 6: kind of I could have never anticipated how that would

1265
01:19:16,840 --> 01:19:19,679
Speaker 6: become such a signature piece for me, and I thank

1266
01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:22,680
Speaker 6: the producers of that series, which is still in syndication.

1267
01:19:23,760 --> 01:19:27,200
Speaker 6: But the most weird but it turns out to be

1268
01:19:27,439 --> 01:19:32,840
Speaker 6: very celebratory. Simple usage of it turned out to be

1269
01:19:32,920 --> 01:19:36,559
Speaker 6: Celo Green when he used it on a two called

1270
01:19:36,600 --> 01:19:41,360
Speaker 6: Sign of the Times recently, and he just kind of

1271
01:19:42,120 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 6: sang over it, redid it added a lyric to it.

1272
01:19:46,040 --> 01:19:49,160
Speaker 6: And first, it was a little bit shocking when I

1273
01:19:49,200 --> 01:19:51,800
Speaker 6: first found out about it, because they hadn't come to

1274
01:19:51,840 --> 01:19:53,519
Speaker 6: me in advance about it either.

1275
01:19:54,080 --> 01:19:57,840
Speaker 2: But when I first heard it, I loved it so much.

1276
01:19:58,080 --> 01:20:01,479
Speaker 2: I just couldn't be anything but.

1277
01:20:01,479 --> 01:20:04,759
Speaker 6: Happy about it, and we ended up the really fair

1278
01:20:04,880 --> 01:20:08,880
Speaker 6: and nice licensing arrangement, and it has led to me

1279
01:20:09,000 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 6: being able to meet him in person in a similar

1280
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:17,000
Speaker 6: way that I confronted Rizzard recently. But Celo and I

1281
01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:22,040
Speaker 6: did some stuff together and we wrote a song together

1282
01:20:22,120 --> 01:20:24,680
Speaker 6: that's going to be on the same new album of

1283
01:20:24,680 --> 01:20:28,479
Speaker 6: the album You haven't heard Side of the Times by Celo.

1284
01:20:28,960 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 6: It's my Taxi piece reinterpreted by him.

1285
01:20:33,600 --> 01:20:36,320
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, well wait, you mean the Sign of the

1286
01:20:36,360 --> 01:20:39,400
Speaker 3: Times that Rod Timberton worked on that.

1287
01:20:38,560 --> 01:20:40,280
Speaker 2: That's by Side of the Times.

1288
01:20:40,520 --> 01:20:45,479
Speaker 6: So the Times, Yeah, right, that Rod Timperton worked on

1289
01:20:45,560 --> 01:20:50,120
Speaker 6: this on my album. The Selo version, which he called

1290
01:20:50,200 --> 01:20:52,800
Speaker 6: Side of the Times, has his lyric that has Sign

1291
01:20:52,840 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 6: of the Times in the lyric.

1292
01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:58,519
Speaker 3: I see it's you have another version another song called

1293
01:20:58,520 --> 01:20:59,680
Speaker 3: Sign of the Times that's not.

1294
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:02,280
Speaker 1: Right related to the tempert.

1295
01:21:02,720 --> 01:21:06,720
Speaker 6: Several Side of the Time songs, but but here his

1296
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:12,559
Speaker 6: side of the Times has my Taxi melody and a

1297
01:21:12,680 --> 01:21:17,320
Speaker 6: very very cool but very specific reinterpretation of it that

1298
01:21:18,920 --> 01:21:21,280
Speaker 6: It was a great opportunity for me to meet him

1299
01:21:21,560 --> 01:21:22,879
Speaker 6: and collaborate.

1300
01:21:27,920 --> 01:21:29,320
Speaker 1: I want to ask about your gear.

1301
01:21:30,320 --> 01:21:34,320
Speaker 3: I know that as a creator who you know, since

1302
01:21:34,360 --> 01:21:37,640
Speaker 3: the Explosion record, like you've been experimented with like electronic

1303
01:21:38,360 --> 01:21:41,040
Speaker 3: sonics and whatnot. But I do know like a lot

1304
01:21:41,080 --> 01:21:44,240
Speaker 3: of those early synthesizers that were available in the seventies

1305
01:21:44,240 --> 01:21:48,040
Speaker 3: were monophonic, which kind of makes it limiting for you

1306
01:21:48,080 --> 01:21:49,760
Speaker 3: to play chords or anything, like you got to play

1307
01:21:49,760 --> 01:21:53,639
Speaker 3: one note. But I know, like around seventy six seventy

1308
01:21:53,680 --> 01:21:58,800
Speaker 3: seven when they're making polyphonic synthesizers which allows you to

1309
01:21:58,880 --> 01:22:04,439
Speaker 3: make chords. Are sort of manufacturers the Yamahas of the day,

1310
01:22:04,640 --> 01:22:07,720
Speaker 3: the or the the electronic makers of the day.

1311
01:22:07,760 --> 01:22:11,680
Speaker 1: Are they courting you? Are you getting endorsements? Are you.

1312
01:22:13,400 --> 01:22:16,120
Speaker 3: Sort of in that Stevie wonder way where you know

1313
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:18,880
Speaker 3: they go to him and Herbie Hancock with all this

1314
01:22:20,160 --> 01:22:23,000
Speaker 3: new gadgetry and like here like use our stuff. And

1315
01:22:23,439 --> 01:22:26,799
Speaker 3: more specifically in the seventies early eighties, not now where

1316
01:22:27,240 --> 01:22:30,719
Speaker 3: of course, now you know we use that every day,

1317
01:22:30,760 --> 01:22:35,040
Speaker 3: but in the late seventies and eighties, like what was

1318
01:22:35,120 --> 01:22:39,400
Speaker 3: the courting system like with keyboard makers and you.

1319
01:22:41,160 --> 01:22:42,040
Speaker 2: I don't remember.

1320
01:22:41,840 --> 01:22:44,960
Speaker 6: Exactly when I got endorsement from Yamaha, but I've been

1321
01:22:45,120 --> 01:22:49,120
Speaker 6: affiliated with them for many many years now, specifically the

1322
01:22:49,200 --> 01:22:52,400
Speaker 6: discal Vier, the acousticana that has many capability that I

1323
01:22:52,520 --> 01:22:55,200
Speaker 6: use all the time. I love it, and I have

1324
01:22:55,280 --> 01:22:58,439
Speaker 6: a montage and motif whatever. I use a lot of

1325
01:22:58,520 --> 01:23:05,000
Speaker 6: Yamaha gear and I am affiliated with them. Most of

1326
01:23:05,040 --> 01:23:07,720
Speaker 6: the rest of my gear throughout has been I pay

1327
01:23:07,840 --> 01:23:10,680
Speaker 6: for it and I go to the music store and

1328
01:23:10,720 --> 01:23:16,400
Speaker 6: buy it whatever. Ara, you were talking about the polyphonic synthesizers.

1329
01:23:16,439 --> 01:23:20,240
Speaker 6: I can remember the early stages of that when it

1330
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:25,439
Speaker 6: was very primitive by today's standards, and Oberheim was the

1331
01:23:25,479 --> 01:23:29,800
Speaker 6: company that I remember that had the polyphonic synthesizer that

1332
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:34,320
Speaker 6: had separate oscillators for each sound. So in the Oberheim

1333
01:23:34,400 --> 01:23:38,400
Speaker 6: eight voice was the one I a lot that you

1334
01:23:38,400 --> 01:23:41,400
Speaker 6: could play polyphonically on it, but each note in the

1335
01:23:41,520 --> 01:23:45,160
Speaker 6: chord was going to it through a different oscillator and

1336
01:23:45,280 --> 01:23:51,320
Speaker 6: manipulated very differently than the way the more recent polyphonic synthesizers.

1337
01:23:50,720 --> 01:23:53,040
Speaker 2: Are, so that gave it a character.

1338
01:23:53,400 --> 01:23:57,240
Speaker 6: Each oscillator you could kind of tweak it, and there

1339
01:23:57,320 --> 01:24:01,280
Speaker 6: was a thickness about it that they gave that Oberheim

1340
01:24:01,760 --> 01:24:06,160
Speaker 6: eight boys, where I made a lot of records using that,

1341
01:24:07,640 --> 01:24:11,519
Speaker 6: and I remember that they were also funky in a

1342
01:24:11,840 --> 01:24:16,840
Speaker 6: sense that yes, you could play four six eight no chords,

1343
01:24:17,479 --> 01:24:20,800
Speaker 6: but it was the sensesizer was trying to catch up.

1344
01:24:20,880 --> 01:24:23,559
Speaker 6: If you try to do anything too fancy or too

1345
01:24:23,600 --> 01:24:27,120
Speaker 6: fast changing, it didn't behave like a.

1346
01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:29,160
Speaker 1: Yato.

1347
01:24:31,479 --> 01:24:32,320
Speaker 2: So if you held the.

1348
01:24:32,360 --> 01:24:34,759
Speaker 6: Notes down, you could do a string pad or something

1349
01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:37,160
Speaker 6: like that, but if you tried to do something really

1350
01:24:37,840 --> 01:24:42,640
Speaker 6: really technically fast with it, it was clumsy.

1351
01:24:43,280 --> 01:24:46,320
Speaker 7: I was just gonna ask. I wanted to make sure

1352
01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:49,600
Speaker 7: we got in questions about four play. I used to

1353
01:24:49,680 --> 01:24:52,439
Speaker 7: do my homework to those records in school in high school,

1354
01:24:53,680 --> 01:24:57,439
Speaker 7: so I specifically I just wanted just the between the

1355
01:24:57,439 --> 01:24:59,920
Speaker 7: sheets album and the lixer like those like I played

1356
01:25:00,000 --> 01:25:03,360
Speaker 7: those records like you know, back and forth. I wanted

1357
01:25:03,400 --> 01:25:06,400
Speaker 7: to ask one how did all you guys come together?

1358
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:10,760
Speaker 7: And specifically, if you have any memories of recording, why

1359
01:25:10,760 --> 01:25:11,679
Speaker 7: can't it wait till morning?

1360
01:25:11,880 --> 01:25:14,400
Speaker 4: Phil Common, what that session was like?

1361
01:25:15,200 --> 01:25:21,160
Speaker 6: That's my shit, many many, many great memories from those years.

1362
01:25:21,520 --> 01:25:24,720
Speaker 6: In nineteen ninety one, I think it was I was

1363
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:27,959
Speaker 6: headed out to Los Angeles working on an album of mine.

1364
01:25:28,240 --> 01:25:31,680
Speaker 6: That album ended up being called Grand Panel Canyon, and

1365
01:25:33,120 --> 01:25:36,080
Speaker 6: I had brought Harvey Mason to New York many many

1366
01:25:36,120 --> 01:25:39,280
Speaker 6: times to play with me because most of my sessions

1367
01:25:39,280 --> 01:25:41,759
Speaker 6: were being done in New York at that time.

1368
01:25:42,439 --> 01:25:47,080
Speaker 2: But I had also Lee Retnauer had used me on

1369
01:25:47,160 --> 01:25:48,120
Speaker 2: the project of.

1370
01:25:48,080 --> 01:25:52,600
Speaker 6: His, and we were dealing with wanting to do reciprocal

1371
01:25:52,720 --> 01:25:55,599
Speaker 6: So if I do something for you, play for you,

1372
01:25:55,920 --> 01:25:58,600
Speaker 6: I want you to play on my album whatever. He

1373
01:25:59,000 --> 01:26:02,320
Speaker 6: re owed me reciprocal, and since he was LA based,

1374
01:26:03,040 --> 01:26:05,800
Speaker 6: I thought it might be more interesting for me to

1375
01:26:05,840 --> 01:26:09,479
Speaker 6: go to LA and use bothly Written Hour and Harvey

1376
01:26:09,479 --> 01:26:13,519
Speaker 6: Mason on my album. So I planned it and didn't

1377
01:26:13,520 --> 01:26:17,120
Speaker 6: know who to hire on bass. Wasn't that familiar with

1378
01:26:17,160 --> 01:26:20,320
Speaker 6: the LA scene. So I asked both Lee and Harvey

1379
01:26:20,760 --> 01:26:24,760
Speaker 6: who try to use on bass, and separately both came

1380
01:26:24,840 --> 01:26:27,479
Speaker 6: up at the same answer Nathan East, who I had

1381
01:26:27,520 --> 01:26:31,160
Speaker 6: not met, never had worked with him before. And I

1382
01:26:31,200 --> 01:26:35,960
Speaker 6: found myself in the studio with those three other guys, Nathan, Harvey,

1383
01:26:36,000 --> 01:26:42,240
Speaker 6: and Lee, and something clicked and all four of us

1384
01:26:42,240 --> 01:26:45,599
Speaker 6: could just feel it wasn't like a regular recording session.

1385
01:26:45,680 --> 01:26:49,519
Speaker 6: The combinations of our backgrounds are things that we had

1386
01:26:49,600 --> 01:26:50,560
Speaker 6: worked on.

1387
01:26:52,040 --> 01:26:55,599
Speaker 2: Different projects. Whatever, It just felt really special.

1388
01:26:55,640 --> 01:26:59,080
Speaker 6: And on a break we had a conversation about the

1389
01:26:59,160 --> 01:27:01,559
Speaker 6: idea of how do groups get formed?

1390
01:27:01,680 --> 01:27:02,080
Speaker 2: When?

1391
01:27:02,520 --> 01:27:04,679
Speaker 6: How did Weather Report get formed? How did the modern

1392
01:27:04,760 --> 01:27:07,920
Speaker 6: Judge portet get formed? When did they decide to put

1393
01:27:07,960 --> 01:27:10,559
Speaker 6: a name on it and be a group rather than

1394
01:27:10,600 --> 01:27:15,240
Speaker 6: an individual? And one thing I do another I had

1395
01:27:15,240 --> 01:27:17,800
Speaker 6: at our job at Warner Brothers Records, and I was

1396
01:27:17,800 --> 01:27:21,519
Speaker 6: able to go to a meeting there and say, will

1397
01:27:21,560 --> 01:27:25,639
Speaker 6: you give us a budget to experiment and do a project,

1398
01:27:26,120 --> 01:27:32,200
Speaker 6: never thinking about it becoming a full time long thing.

1399
01:27:32,960 --> 01:27:36,519
Speaker 6: It was at that time maybe just one project was

1400
01:27:36,560 --> 01:27:43,320
Speaker 6: all we were thinking about. But the first song of Restoration,

1401
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:49,680
Speaker 6: my composition on my album, was what we remember as

1402
01:27:49,760 --> 01:27:53,160
Speaker 6: being kind of like the first idea of a four

1403
01:27:53,200 --> 01:27:53,799
Speaker 6: place sound.

1404
01:27:56,640 --> 01:27:59,479
Speaker 3: Okay, so, speaking of warners, I always wanted to know this.

1405
01:28:00,000 --> 01:28:04,120
Speaker 3: I'm not asking this because you're categorized in a certain

1406
01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:07,160
Speaker 3: type of jazz, but I always wanted to know, you know.

1407
01:28:07,200 --> 01:28:13,080
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy seven, when Tommy Lapluna and George Benson

1408
01:28:14,040 --> 01:28:18,519
Speaker 3: create The Breezing Record, which was such a breakthrough album

1409
01:28:18,720 --> 01:28:21,920
Speaker 3: in terms of the multiple nominations that it got for

1410
01:28:22,000 --> 01:28:25,160
Speaker 3: Grammys and whatnot, you know, people were pretty much ready

1411
01:28:25,200 --> 01:28:28,960
Speaker 3: to dismiss George Benson, and not dismiss him, but you know,

1412
01:28:29,160 --> 01:28:31,880
Speaker 3: even he said like, well, I'm at the end of

1413
01:28:31,880 --> 01:28:33,720
Speaker 3: my room. Let me make this last record real quick

1414
01:28:33,720 --> 01:28:37,360
Speaker 3: and then retire. And then suddenly Breezing blows up. But

1415
01:28:38,240 --> 01:28:41,160
Speaker 3: did you see the embracing of that album as a

1416
01:28:41,320 --> 01:28:45,160
Speaker 3: victory for the type of jazz that you were doing,

1417
01:28:45,160 --> 01:28:47,120
Speaker 3: the type of instrumental music that you were doing. The

1418
01:28:47,160 --> 01:28:57,960
Speaker 3: fact that that album was somewhat embraced by the mainstream

1419
01:28:58,000 --> 01:29:02,280
Speaker 3: community and given all those accolades, all those Grammy nominations

1420
01:29:02,320 --> 01:29:02,759
Speaker 3: and whatnot.

1421
01:29:04,120 --> 01:29:10,679
Speaker 6: Yes, I was experiencing it from a distance, having done

1422
01:29:10,720 --> 01:29:14,080
Speaker 6: some collaborating with George when he was at CTI, and

1423
01:29:14,120 --> 01:29:17,920
Speaker 6: I was a little bit familiar with the complicated exit

1424
01:29:18,000 --> 01:29:21,120
Speaker 6: from CTI and when he went over to Warner Brothers

1425
01:29:21,439 --> 01:29:26,320
Speaker 6: and the sort of transition from just being a guitar

1426
01:29:26,400 --> 01:29:30,959
Speaker 6: player to a singer, and watched what was in George's

1427
01:29:30,960 --> 01:29:34,360
Speaker 6: mind of what he really wanted to do. And somewhat

1428
01:29:34,439 --> 01:29:37,519
Speaker 6: later after he went to Warner Brothers, I also got

1429
01:29:37,840 --> 01:29:41,040
Speaker 6: the job of producing one of his records, and at

1430
01:29:41,040 --> 01:29:44,600
Speaker 6: that time big bosses of Warner Brothers gave me the

1431
01:29:44,640 --> 01:29:49,280
Speaker 6: assignment of wanting to him play more guitar, but as

1432
01:29:49,320 --> 01:29:51,800
Speaker 6: I started to work with him, his heart was in

1433
01:29:52,280 --> 01:29:56,799
Speaker 6: singing more, and I could see that that has always

1434
01:29:56,840 --> 01:29:57,640
Speaker 6: been a conflict.

1435
01:29:58,000 --> 01:30:00,840
Speaker 2: And a lot of people, jazz.

1436
01:30:00,560 --> 01:30:04,639
Speaker 6: Fans just are aware of the genius that comes out

1437
01:30:04,680 --> 01:30:06,880
Speaker 6: of his fingers when he plays guitar that nobody else

1438
01:30:07,640 --> 01:30:08,200
Speaker 6: and do it.

1439
01:30:08,800 --> 01:30:10,720
Speaker 2: But uh, his.

1440
01:30:12,240 --> 01:30:16,680
Speaker 6: Whole other part of his personality felt that talent that

1441
01:30:16,720 --> 01:30:19,240
Speaker 6: he had as a singer too, and in the In

1442
01:30:19,280 --> 01:30:25,080
Speaker 6: a Breezing album, both were happy, both of course.

1443
01:30:26,320 --> 01:30:27,120
Speaker 2: Masquerade and.

1444
01:30:29,240 --> 01:30:33,280
Speaker 6: Every time I hear Breasons that tune, the same thing

1445
01:30:33,520 --> 01:30:37,519
Speaker 6: happens to me. There's no bridge, which was for us

1446
01:30:37,560 --> 01:30:40,839
Speaker 6: at that time. It's unusual. It's just the same. It's

1447
01:30:40,840 --> 01:30:45,200
Speaker 6: it's the same key and it just keeps repeating. But

1448
01:30:47,200 --> 01:30:53,640
Speaker 6: it was eight bars, uh, and it's just simple. He

1449
01:30:53,760 --> 01:30:56,400
Speaker 6: never goes away from it. And some of us who

1450
01:30:57,000 --> 01:31:01,200
Speaker 6: who have all these things, we think about stay with

1451
01:31:01,240 --> 01:31:03,400
Speaker 6: the hook, you know, don't get away from the hook,

1452
01:31:03,439 --> 01:31:07,160
Speaker 6: don't get too cute, don't get too complicated, because the

1453
01:31:07,800 --> 01:31:11,880
Speaker 6: fans want to hear that melody. And the way that

1454
01:31:11,880 --> 01:31:18,160
Speaker 6: that record was produced was so clearly on the on

1455
01:31:18,200 --> 01:31:22,400
Speaker 6: the money in terms of drive home that hook drive

1456
01:31:22,479 --> 01:31:23,920
Speaker 6: home uniqueness.

1457
01:31:24,160 --> 01:31:26,519
Speaker 2: It just made me want to go back to the

1458
01:31:26,600 --> 01:31:28,559
Speaker 2: drawing boards. I want to try to do that.

1459
01:31:28,800 --> 01:31:31,599
Speaker 6: I want to try to do something similar, but then

1460
01:31:31,640 --> 01:31:35,479
Speaker 6: you realize it's not easy to buy that matchic.

1461
01:31:35,960 --> 01:31:38,599
Speaker 3: I think a lot of our fan base might not

1462
01:31:38,800 --> 01:31:45,559
Speaker 3: know that Reason was written by Bobby Womack. It's actually

1463
01:31:45,560 --> 01:31:48,280
Speaker 3: a Bobby Womack cover, which I didn't know. I just

1464
01:31:48,360 --> 01:31:52,519
Speaker 3: recently found the Bobby Womack original, And you know, I

1465
01:31:52,640 --> 01:31:56,800
Speaker 3: tend to forget that Bob Womack was actually a good

1466
01:31:56,840 --> 01:31:59,440
Speaker 3: guitar player, Like so you know, that was the instrumental

1467
01:31:59,439 --> 01:32:03,839
Speaker 3: on one of his records in nineteen seventy one.

1468
01:32:04,720 --> 01:32:08,360
Speaker 6: And I know I'm getting to know quest love as

1469
01:32:08,400 --> 01:32:10,840
Speaker 6: a musicologist.

1470
01:32:10,400 --> 01:32:13,400
Speaker 1: To music nerds man.

1471
01:32:14,760 --> 01:32:16,840
Speaker 2: Because I knew.

1472
01:32:16,640 --> 01:32:19,519
Speaker 6: That sort of in my district memory. But I don't

1473
01:32:19,520 --> 01:32:21,320
Speaker 6: think I ever heard Bobby one Mac's version.

1474
01:32:22,320 --> 01:32:25,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's damn near the same song, just

1475
01:32:26,520 --> 01:32:29,920
Speaker 3: with a harder Well when we say harder more like

1476
01:32:29,960 --> 01:32:33,360
Speaker 3: a hip hop is that should jump on it like

1477
01:32:33,439 --> 01:32:36,920
Speaker 3: it's it's actually amazing. The drums are more kracking on

1478
01:32:38,000 --> 01:32:40,800
Speaker 3: the wool Mac version. We are you going to ask Steve.

1479
01:32:41,960 --> 01:32:45,719
Speaker 4: Well, we kind of reazed right over it the time

1480
01:32:45,720 --> 01:32:49,080
Speaker 4: period that I wanted to talk about. I mean, Bob

1481
01:32:49,160 --> 01:32:53,000
Speaker 4: James had the coolest, one of the most iconic jazz

1482
01:32:53,080 --> 01:32:56,599
Speaker 4: labels of all the time with tappan Ze Records, and

1483
01:32:56,840 --> 01:33:02,360
Speaker 4: I'm a little curious about the the timetable because you

1484
01:33:02,439 --> 01:33:05,320
Speaker 4: were a and ring at Columbia. Was that during the

1485
01:33:05,360 --> 01:33:10,200
Speaker 4: CTI years when you were arranging and also playing on

1486
01:33:10,280 --> 01:33:11,560
Speaker 4: CTI records.

1487
01:33:12,240 --> 01:33:14,880
Speaker 2: I kind of had reached the end of my CTI.

1488
01:33:16,800 --> 01:33:20,960
Speaker 6: After my four solo albums that ended up around nineteen

1489
01:33:20,960 --> 01:33:25,080
Speaker 6: seventy seven, and there were some problems with CTI in

1490
01:33:25,120 --> 01:33:28,799
Speaker 6: the business world too, and then the lack of payment

1491
01:33:28,840 --> 01:33:37,639
Speaker 6: of royalties, et cetera, which necessitated me litigating there. I'm

1492
01:33:37,840 --> 01:33:46,240
Speaker 6: beginning to make it sound like a which I hope

1493
01:33:46,280 --> 01:33:49,479
Speaker 6: I wasn't in the long version of that. But there

1494
01:33:49,520 --> 01:33:52,000
Speaker 6: have been times when I've had to protect and in

1495
01:33:52,040 --> 01:33:54,760
Speaker 6: this case, I'm glad I did because I ended up

1496
01:33:54,840 --> 01:33:58,200
Speaker 6: with the ownership of my four records, which made it

1497
01:33:58,280 --> 01:33:59,120
Speaker 6: possible for me.

1498
01:33:59,200 --> 01:34:01,160
Speaker 2: To make many many things happened.

1499
01:34:01,439 --> 01:34:04,600
Speaker 6: So I left in nineteen seventy seven, negotiated with Columbia

1500
01:34:05,040 --> 01:34:09,360
Speaker 6: and signed there where Bruce Lenvall was the president.

1501
01:34:09,560 --> 01:34:12,000
Speaker 2: And he did give me the opportunity.

1502
01:34:11,640 --> 01:34:14,800
Speaker 6: To start a small custom label with the idea that

1503
01:34:15,560 --> 01:34:20,040
Speaker 6: I could do a continuation of sort of the CTI approach,

1504
01:34:20,920 --> 01:34:25,360
Speaker 6: in which I had done enough in this role of

1505
01:34:25,400 --> 01:34:30,160
Speaker 6: a ranger conductor for pre Taylor that my intention was

1506
01:34:30,200 --> 01:34:33,160
Speaker 6: to not do exactly what Greed Taylor did, but my

1507
01:34:33,360 --> 01:34:37,000
Speaker 6: version of it and tried to develop my own style,

1508
01:34:37,160 --> 01:34:41,519
Speaker 6: but influenced by him, and very early tonight you mentioned

1509
01:34:41,600 --> 01:34:48,800
Speaker 6: Joe Jorgenson. For many, many memories, I wanted Joe Jorgenson

1510
01:34:48,960 --> 01:34:51,799
Speaker 6: to be my Rudy van Gelder because Rudy Van Gelder

1511
01:34:51,920 --> 01:34:56,800
Speaker 6: was a very unique engineer for Preed Taylor and his

1512
01:34:57,040 --> 01:35:01,200
Speaker 6: style of engineering the sound of those records very different

1513
01:35:01,200 --> 01:35:05,160
Speaker 6: from anything else was out there, and in my experience

1514
01:35:05,200 --> 01:35:08,120
Speaker 6: of doing studio work in New York, Joe was the

1515
01:35:08,160 --> 01:35:12,680
Speaker 6: guy that I thought had the most interesting ears that

1516
01:35:12,760 --> 01:35:14,920
Speaker 6: the two of us could collaborate on trying to come

1517
01:35:15,000 --> 01:35:16,519
Speaker 6: up with our own sound.

1518
01:35:17,240 --> 01:35:20,400
Speaker 3: Would Rudy pre mix the stuff or like, would you

1519
01:35:20,439 --> 01:35:22,880
Speaker 3: guys track first then mix afterwards.

1520
01:35:23,439 --> 01:35:30,880
Speaker 6: That's a very good funny question because Rudy was extremely

1521
01:35:30,960 --> 01:35:34,200
Speaker 6: secretive about any of his techniques and he did not

1522
01:35:34,439 --> 01:35:36,880
Speaker 6: like sharing. He didn't not like anybody asking me any

1523
01:35:36,920 --> 01:35:37,559
Speaker 6: questions about you.

1524
01:35:37,640 --> 01:35:40,959
Speaker 1: Knew what my next question was, like share the secrets.

1525
01:35:41,479 --> 01:35:45,880
Speaker 6: So I got the job of writing these arrangements on

1526
01:35:46,200 --> 01:35:49,320
Speaker 6: where we'd have basic tracks, and all Rudy would be

1527
01:35:49,360 --> 01:35:53,320
Speaker 6: willing to give me was this rough of two track

1528
01:35:53,720 --> 01:35:56,479
Speaker 6: from the basic sessions, and I would take that home

1529
01:35:56,920 --> 01:36:00,880
Speaker 6: and listen to that to make my arrangements mix on

1530
01:36:00,920 --> 01:36:04,160
Speaker 6: those roughs that he sent me with the worst, most

1531
01:36:04,479 --> 01:36:09,000
Speaker 6: crude o reverb, no ambious, nothing, because he didn't want

1532
01:36:09,000 --> 01:36:14,080
Speaker 6: to let anything out of his studio that could even

1533
01:36:14,560 --> 01:36:18,000
Speaker 6: possibly be released. And so I have that memory of

1534
01:36:18,040 --> 01:36:22,000
Speaker 6: his mixing is so completely different from the way anybody

1535
01:36:22,040 --> 01:36:22,519
Speaker 6: else work.

1536
01:36:22,960 --> 01:36:28,439
Speaker 3: Wait, do you have a dry Rudy flat mix in

1537
01:36:28,479 --> 01:36:29,160
Speaker 3: your possession?

1538
01:36:30,200 --> 01:36:33,760
Speaker 2: Well? I have many. If I could find a real

1539
01:36:33,880 --> 01:36:35,160
Speaker 2: real player that would play.

1540
01:36:34,960 --> 01:36:39,200
Speaker 3: The I'm begging you to make a compilation of just dry.

1541
01:36:39,640 --> 01:36:45,040
Speaker 3: Because the thing is is until like Steve really got

1542
01:36:45,040 --> 01:36:49,320
Speaker 3: me into like listening to Steve's obsession with CDI like,

1543
01:36:49,560 --> 01:36:53,200
Speaker 3: and I'm sorry for really car jacking his interview Steve,

1544
01:36:54,000 --> 01:36:56,639
Speaker 3: Like Steve is the CTI coologist. So the thing is

1545
01:36:56,640 --> 01:37:02,000
Speaker 3: is that when I started studying Rudy's mix, thing I

1546
01:37:02,200 --> 01:37:05,599
Speaker 3: never was a fan of compression because I never liked

1547
01:37:05,720 --> 01:37:10,559
Speaker 3: being squeezed. But somehow on your on your records, on

1548
01:37:10,600 --> 01:37:15,760
Speaker 3: Grover's records, like certain CTI product, there's there's kind of

1549
01:37:15,760 --> 01:37:18,959
Speaker 3: a I don't know, I can't I don't have the

1550
01:37:19,000 --> 01:37:23,960
Speaker 3: proper eloquence to say the right words that describe Rudy's

1551
01:37:23,960 --> 01:37:29,479
Speaker 3: texture and his relationship with reverb and compression. But like, yeah,

1552
01:37:29,479 --> 01:37:31,880
Speaker 3: that's that's the secret sauce that I'm dying because I

1553
01:37:31,880 --> 01:37:38,400
Speaker 3: feel like that is the the apex of seventies production

1554
01:37:39,800 --> 01:37:42,200
Speaker 3: that I can't master just yet.

1555
01:37:42,760 --> 01:37:45,479
Speaker 4: To go to his studio. It's still open, let's.

1556
01:37:45,280 --> 01:37:50,000
Speaker 3: Go, and still unscathed and still yeah, it's it's exactly

1557
01:37:50,040 --> 01:37:50,360
Speaker 3: the same.

1558
01:37:51,200 --> 01:37:53,880
Speaker 6: I'm I'm in the same boat as you, even though

1559
01:37:53,920 --> 01:37:56,439
Speaker 6: I spent it was almost like a full time job.

1560
01:37:56,920 --> 01:37:58,559
Speaker 2: Being there every day.

1561
01:37:58,360 --> 01:38:02,360
Speaker 6: In a studio for five years, and I never learned

1562
01:38:02,400 --> 01:38:04,679
Speaker 6: much about the details of it either, because he wouldn't

1563
01:38:04,680 --> 01:38:05,120
Speaker 6: talk about it.

1564
01:38:05,200 --> 01:38:06,480
Speaker 2: He wouldn't share anything.

1565
01:38:06,800 --> 01:38:10,760
Speaker 6: Every one of his all of his gear, like his

1566
01:38:11,000 --> 01:38:14,080
Speaker 6: equalizers or compressors, anything like that.

1567
01:38:14,080 --> 01:38:14,519
Speaker 2: He had.

1568
01:38:14,760 --> 01:38:18,880
Speaker 6: He had taped over the manufacturers the names of him,

1569
01:38:19,000 --> 01:38:22,280
Speaker 6: so he didn't want you to know what they were.

1570
01:38:22,280 --> 01:38:23,040
Speaker 1: That's hip hop.

1571
01:38:23,160 --> 01:38:25,240
Speaker 3: See that's hip hop, that's hide in the labels, Like

1572
01:38:25,320 --> 01:38:26,920
Speaker 3: y'alln't even know that, y'all.

1573
01:38:28,479 --> 01:38:29,439
Speaker 1: Following a cycle.

1574
01:38:34,600 --> 01:38:37,280
Speaker 4: So yeah, hey guys, Bob James had one of the

1575
01:38:37,280 --> 01:38:39,880
Speaker 4: most iconic jazz labels of all time called Tap and

1576
01:38:39,960 --> 01:38:44,320
Speaker 4: Z Records, And yeah, I just wanted to I found

1577
01:38:44,360 --> 01:38:48,719
Speaker 4: it really interesting what artists you chose to have leader

1578
01:38:48,760 --> 01:38:51,599
Speaker 4: albums on Tap and Zee. Obviously you had so many

1579
01:38:51,640 --> 01:38:53,840
Speaker 4: of your own records on that label as well, But

1580
01:38:54,200 --> 01:38:55,960
Speaker 4: I want to just run some names by you that

1581
01:38:56,040 --> 01:38:59,479
Speaker 4: might not necessarily be household names for listeners or for

1582
01:39:00,200 --> 01:39:02,599
Speaker 4: or for us, and if maybe you could just give

1583
01:39:02,680 --> 01:39:05,799
Speaker 4: us just a brief, you know, blurb about them, because

1584
01:39:06,240 --> 01:39:08,040
Speaker 4: I'd be interested in Wilbert Longmire.

1585
01:39:09,080 --> 01:39:12,439
Speaker 6: Yeah. I found out about Wilbert through George Benson. Actually,

1586
01:39:12,439 --> 01:39:15,920
Speaker 6: he and George Benson were friends, and George had heard him,

1587
01:39:16,640 --> 01:39:20,720
Speaker 6: and yeah, he sang and played guitar, and to get

1588
01:39:20,720 --> 01:39:23,679
Speaker 6: a recommendation with George Benson's but good as you could

1589
01:39:23,840 --> 01:39:28,640
Speaker 6: vote for. So that's the main reason why I signed Wilbert.

1590
01:39:28,920 --> 01:39:32,599
Speaker 6: And it was at a time when I was very

1591
01:39:32,720 --> 01:39:37,120
Speaker 6: much in the heat of wanting to be a good

1592
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:41,000
Speaker 6: follow up to the CTI sound, but my own version

1593
01:39:41,040 --> 01:39:41,320
Speaker 6: of it.

1594
01:39:41,960 --> 01:39:42,360
Speaker 4: Wow.

1595
01:39:42,880 --> 01:39:45,560
Speaker 2: And that's that was the end result.

1596
01:39:45,280 --> 01:39:48,400
Speaker 4: Of it, okay. Joe Anne Brakeen.

1597
01:39:48,960 --> 01:39:56,080
Speaker 6: Very very original pianist, amazing. She could not be produced

1598
01:39:56,120 --> 01:39:58,120
Speaker 6: in any kind of way like some of the other

1599
01:39:58,320 --> 01:40:01,240
Speaker 6: coversion artists that I I had a chance to work with.

1600
01:40:01,680 --> 01:40:05,400
Speaker 2: She was completely her own person.

1601
01:40:06,000 --> 01:40:11,559
Speaker 6: So my role with her in some ways was to

1602
01:40:11,600 --> 01:40:14,360
Speaker 6: try to be like what I would want a producer

1603
01:40:14,640 --> 01:40:17,480
Speaker 6: to be with me if I just had complete authority

1604
01:40:17,520 --> 01:40:21,040
Speaker 6: to do whatever I wanted to do. And I knew

1605
01:40:21,080 --> 01:40:24,439
Speaker 6: that it would be a kind of simple production because

1606
01:40:24,520 --> 01:40:27,200
Speaker 6: she just wanted to play jazz with a great rhythm

1607
01:40:27,200 --> 01:40:32,000
Speaker 6: session and make sure we have the best engineer for her,

1608
01:40:32,120 --> 01:40:34,519
Speaker 6: get the right sounds for her, and let her do

1609
01:40:34,640 --> 01:40:39,800
Speaker 6: her own thing. That was pretty much my goal with Joanne.

1610
01:40:40,720 --> 01:40:43,680
Speaker 4: There was an artist named Mark Colby that did a

1611
01:40:43,680 --> 01:40:44,960
Speaker 4: couple of records on Tappenzi.

1612
01:40:45,520 --> 01:40:48,280
Speaker 2: Yeah. He toured with me a lot, played my band, and.

1613
01:40:49,840 --> 01:40:55,960
Speaker 6: I've always loved power in his playing and I could

1614
01:40:56,040 --> 01:40:59,120
Speaker 6: treat him similarly to the way I tried to treat

1615
01:40:59,160 --> 01:41:03,120
Speaker 6: Grover Washington and for example, another sexophone player for that label.

1616
01:41:03,880 --> 01:41:07,320
Speaker 2: And very fond memories of those.

1617
01:41:07,160 --> 01:41:12,479
Speaker 4: Records, and Richard T the piano player, did a leader

1618
01:41:12,760 --> 01:41:14,760
Speaker 4: album or two on Tapaze as well.

1619
01:41:15,760 --> 01:41:20,639
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, Richard being a member of that stuff rhythm

1620
01:41:20,640 --> 01:41:25,000
Speaker 6: section that had Eric Gill on guitar and Gordon Edward

1621
01:41:25,080 --> 01:41:28,960
Speaker 6: was the bass and Rob McDonald percussion. They were a

1622
01:41:29,080 --> 01:41:33,479
Speaker 6: kind of quintessential top, top of the line R and

1623
01:41:33,560 --> 01:41:40,840
Speaker 6: B based rhythm section and Richard T's unique kind of

1624
01:41:41,680 --> 01:41:49,559
Speaker 6: heavily Church influenced combination organ and sometimes Fender roads. I

1625
01:41:49,720 --> 01:41:52,800
Speaker 6: just loved everything about him. I'm trying to emulate some

1626
01:41:52,880 --> 01:41:59,040
Speaker 6: of his feel because I was alongside him on many

1627
01:41:59,200 --> 01:42:03,240
Speaker 6: sessions where some of the Quincy Jones States and a

1628
01:42:03,240 --> 01:42:05,920
Speaker 6: lot of New York studio days, Richard be on Oregon

1629
01:42:05,960 --> 01:42:09,960
Speaker 6: and I would be on piano or sometimes trade off

1630
01:42:10,040 --> 01:42:13,000
Speaker 6: or whatever. So getting to know him that way and

1631
01:42:13,040 --> 01:42:16,439
Speaker 6: realizing what a uniquely great artist he was, of course

1632
01:42:16,479 --> 01:42:19,080
Speaker 6: he was an obvious one for me to try to sign.

1633
01:42:19,880 --> 01:42:22,800
Speaker 4: And Steve Khan, the guitar player, I think that was

1634
01:42:22,840 --> 01:42:24,440
Speaker 4: the first tappan Zee record.

1635
01:42:25,200 --> 01:42:25,840
Speaker 2: Might have been.

1636
01:42:26,439 --> 01:42:32,520
Speaker 6: Steve was very determined that he wanted the Columbia identity

1637
01:42:32,720 --> 01:42:37,720
Speaker 6: on his album, also SOE logo on it.

1638
01:42:38,200 --> 01:42:42,000
Speaker 1: But but he wanted the Red label, not the Blue.

1639
01:42:41,920 --> 01:42:46,559
Speaker 6: Kind of like that I didn't have enough prestige and

1640
01:42:46,600 --> 01:42:49,160
Speaker 6: that he needed the big name.

1641
01:42:49,000 --> 01:42:52,040
Speaker 2: On there too. He and I were friends, and so

1642
01:42:53,439 --> 01:42:56,360
Speaker 2: he was and smaller budgets.

1643
01:42:56,840 --> 01:43:00,760
Speaker 6: I was somewhat limited to sign the people that were

1644
01:43:00,800 --> 01:43:03,360
Speaker 6: within my sphere that I either knew or that I

1645
01:43:03,439 --> 01:43:04,640
Speaker 6: knew that they were available.

1646
01:43:05,280 --> 01:43:08,040
Speaker 4: Just a couple more Mango Santa Maria.

1647
01:43:09,120 --> 01:43:13,240
Speaker 6: Well, yes, and he came through the bigger label as well.

1648
01:43:14,040 --> 01:43:18,120
Speaker 6: Particular kind of sound, the Latin American sound that I

1649
01:43:18,240 --> 01:43:22,000
Speaker 6: wasn't doing with anybody else, made it possible for us

1650
01:43:22,040 --> 01:43:23,479
Speaker 6: to make some pretty cool.

1651
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:24,080
Speaker 2: Records with him.

1652
01:43:24,840 --> 01:43:29,200
Speaker 4: And where did you come across? Alan Harris came to.

1653
01:43:29,120 --> 01:43:35,799
Speaker 6: Me through Columbia, through just and the most unusual Tapenzy project,

1654
01:43:35,960 --> 01:43:39,200
Speaker 6: I guess, and the one that I had the least

1655
01:43:39,320 --> 01:43:40,320
Speaker 6: influence over.

1656
01:43:40,800 --> 01:43:41,960
Speaker 2: I don't remember.

1657
01:43:42,040 --> 01:43:45,040
Speaker 6: Doing anything musically on it other than making it possible

1658
01:43:45,080 --> 01:43:48,200
Speaker 6: for him to do his thing and trying to treat

1659
01:43:49,240 --> 01:43:52,120
Speaker 6: him the way I would have wanted to be treated

1660
01:43:52,160 --> 01:43:54,880
Speaker 6: as a producer, make it possible for him to create

1661
01:43:54,920 --> 01:43:55,439
Speaker 6: his music.

1662
01:43:56,200 --> 01:43:58,479
Speaker 4: Okay, last one and the one I wanted to know

1663
01:43:58,520 --> 01:44:00,880
Speaker 4: the most about. It seemed to be kind of your

1664
01:44:00,920 --> 01:44:04,000
Speaker 4: partner at the label, which is Jay Chadaway. Can you

1665
01:44:04,000 --> 01:44:06,599
Speaker 4: tell us who a little bit about him?

1666
01:44:07,080 --> 01:44:10,559
Speaker 6: Well, I think I had maybe originally found out about

1667
01:44:10,640 --> 01:44:13,599
Speaker 6: him through Maynard Ferguson because he had done a lot

1668
01:44:13,640 --> 01:44:19,160
Speaker 6: of arranging from Maynard, and I was in need of

1669
01:44:19,360 --> 01:44:22,439
Speaker 6: somebody that had the same kind of arranging background as

1670
01:44:22,479 --> 01:44:24,479
Speaker 6: me because I was not able to keep up with

1671
01:44:24,720 --> 01:44:28,000
Speaker 6: the request that I was getting into do arrangements.

1672
01:44:28,280 --> 01:44:31,719
Speaker 2: So I started working with him in that way.

1673
01:44:31,800 --> 01:44:34,680
Speaker 6: I got to know him a little bit and we

1674
01:44:34,800 --> 01:44:37,880
Speaker 6: hit it off, and I knew he had a similar

1675
01:44:38,160 --> 01:44:43,120
Speaker 6: approach to sound production. And yeah, we had some really

1676
01:44:43,880 --> 01:44:47,400
Speaker 6: very good years and have remained friends. I just he's

1677
01:44:47,439 --> 01:44:50,120
Speaker 6: a big sailor fan. He and his wife live on

1678
01:44:50,160 --> 01:44:51,840
Speaker 6: a boat. A lot of times of the year, they

1679
01:44:52,080 --> 01:44:55,200
Speaker 6: take their take their boat to various places and just

1680
01:44:55,240 --> 01:44:57,439
Speaker 6: take up residence for.

1681
01:44:57,439 --> 01:44:57,960
Speaker 2: A long time.

1682
01:44:58,040 --> 01:45:01,600
Speaker 6: He moved after he after Z stopped, he moved to

1683
01:45:01,720 --> 01:45:06,479
Speaker 6: la and had a very successful career as a movie

1684
01:45:06,520 --> 01:45:10,200
Speaker 6: composer and he was very involved in the Star Trek series.

1685
01:45:11,040 --> 01:45:12,160
Speaker 2: Very very talented guy.

1686
01:45:13,160 --> 01:45:15,400
Speaker 4: Let me just wrap up the tappan Zee thing, Amir.

1687
01:45:15,520 --> 01:45:18,479
Speaker 4: You did such an incredible job with that label. Really

1688
01:45:18,520 --> 01:45:20,560
Speaker 4: the best thing that a label can do, which is

1689
01:45:20,640 --> 01:45:25,719
Speaker 4: create this whole world onto itself with all the beautiful

1690
01:45:25,760 --> 01:45:29,639
Speaker 4: continuity with the album covers, the beautiful gatefold album covers,

1691
01:45:29,640 --> 01:45:32,920
Speaker 4: and really you really knocked it out of the park

1692
01:45:32,960 --> 01:45:35,880
Speaker 4: with the with tap and Z was. I mean, you're

1693
01:45:35,920 --> 01:45:38,800
Speaker 4: welcome for all the rabbit holes folks out there with

1694
01:45:38,840 --> 01:45:42,720
Speaker 4: all those names. But all those tappan Ze records are great. Yeah,

1695
01:45:43,080 --> 01:45:47,040
Speaker 4: short related maybe not the Alan Harris record.

1696
01:45:47,640 --> 01:45:51,880
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't going to say that, you said it now.

1697
01:45:52,560 --> 01:45:53,200
Speaker 2: Short thing.

1698
01:45:53,360 --> 01:45:56,960
Speaker 6: Since you mentioned Joe Jordanson, I more and more think

1699
01:45:57,000 --> 01:46:01,080
Speaker 6: that there just aren't really any total coincidences in life,

1700
01:46:01,120 --> 01:46:05,439
Speaker 6: that some things just happened for a reason. Recently, I

1701
01:46:05,479 --> 01:46:11,000
Speaker 6: was contacted by Joe's son, Michael Jordanson, who is interested

1702
01:46:11,040 --> 01:46:14,320
Speaker 6: in doing a biography on me, and he works with

1703
01:46:14,400 --> 01:46:20,479
Speaker 6: a video production company and I've been starting up a

1704
01:46:20,479 --> 01:46:24,679
Speaker 6: project in which he's going to do biographical thing.

1705
01:46:25,120 --> 01:46:30,200
Speaker 2: He's a member of the group Wilco Who's that's true.

1706
01:46:30,760 --> 01:46:33,960
Speaker 6: But when he grew up, he was when he was

1707
01:46:34,040 --> 01:46:36,679
Speaker 6: I don't know, ten or twelve years old, his father,

1708
01:46:36,840 --> 01:46:39,240
Speaker 6: Joe would invite him into the studio where we were

1709
01:46:39,240 --> 01:46:42,280
Speaker 6: making all those records. During that period of time, and

1710
01:46:42,320 --> 01:46:45,840
Speaker 6: he formed his taste and everything else based upon listening

1711
01:46:45,920 --> 01:46:49,719
Speaker 6: to all those records. And so many many years later

1712
01:46:50,800 --> 01:46:53,720
Speaker 6: after he's gone into business as a keyboard player and

1713
01:46:53,800 --> 01:46:56,400
Speaker 6: has a lot of success with Will Go. Now we're

1714
01:46:56,439 --> 01:47:00,240
Speaker 6: meeting again, and it gives me a chance to pay

1715
01:47:00,320 --> 01:47:03,200
Speaker 6: my respects and have such fond memories of all those

1716
01:47:03,240 --> 01:47:04,320
Speaker 6: great records.

1717
01:47:03,960 --> 01:47:05,479
Speaker 2: That Joe did with.

1718
01:47:05,720 --> 01:47:08,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hear that stand good terms with your engineer

1719
01:47:08,880 --> 01:47:09,439
Speaker 4: could pay off.

1720
01:47:09,520 --> 01:47:13,000
Speaker 1: Yes, what Steve very important.

1721
01:47:13,120 --> 01:47:17,320
Speaker 4: But your very first production was on another Creed Tailor

1722
01:47:17,400 --> 01:47:22,519
Speaker 4: label called Salvation with Goborbo, the Hungarian guitar player. What

1723
01:47:22,600 --> 01:47:25,320
Speaker 4: was that like your first production and what was Zabo

1724
01:47:25,520 --> 01:47:28,080
Speaker 4: like nineteen seventy five.

1725
01:47:28,800 --> 01:47:30,880
Speaker 6: Unique aspect of that for me was it was the

1726
01:47:30,880 --> 01:47:33,720
Speaker 6: only time that I was able to actually produce and

1727
01:47:33,880 --> 01:47:37,559
Speaker 6: do something without Creed Taylor being there. It was his label,

1728
01:47:38,040 --> 01:47:40,280
Speaker 6: but he gave me the flexibility to just do that

1729
01:47:40,320 --> 01:47:42,599
Speaker 6: project on my own, and I went out and.

1730
01:47:43,040 --> 01:47:45,840
Speaker 2: To La and did it.

1731
01:47:46,400 --> 01:47:50,479
Speaker 6: And he was gobor was definitely a gypsy and he

1732
01:47:50,560 --> 01:47:57,360
Speaker 6: had his own style of approach, which I tried to

1733
01:47:57,479 --> 01:48:00,640
Speaker 6: keep that gypsy aspect, but to try to bring some

1734
01:48:00,680 --> 01:48:02,760
Speaker 6: of my own style into it. I wish I could

1735
01:48:02,760 --> 01:48:06,880
Speaker 6: have done more with him because he is kind of

1736
01:48:07,000 --> 01:48:12,240
Speaker 6: like an ideal artist for an arranger to produce, because

1737
01:48:12,760 --> 01:48:15,640
Speaker 6: I want to have the tapestry surrounding him, but I

1738
01:48:15,680 --> 01:48:18,960
Speaker 6: want him to be able to stay within his own style,

1739
01:48:19,040 --> 01:48:20,280
Speaker 6: and that's what I was trying to do.

1740
01:48:20,720 --> 01:48:24,240
Speaker 4: Wow, Gary McFarland worked a lot with him in that regards.

1741
01:48:24,720 --> 01:48:27,559
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, I love Gary McFarland's work. In fact, I

1742
01:48:27,640 --> 01:48:28,439
Speaker 2: was very influenced.

1743
01:48:28,479 --> 01:48:31,000
Speaker 6: But I used to study his records to try to

1744
01:48:31,000 --> 01:48:33,240
Speaker 6: figure out how he made his choices.

1745
01:48:34,400 --> 01:48:36,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Sign of the Times record.

1746
01:48:37,160 --> 01:48:40,080
Speaker 3: Now I get the film about to answer my own question,

1747
01:48:40,120 --> 01:48:42,880
Speaker 3: say Quincy Jones, but I'll ask you, how did you

1748
01:48:43,840 --> 01:48:47,559
Speaker 3: get involved with Rod Temperton working on that album?

1749
01:48:48,560 --> 01:48:51,760
Speaker 6: Quincy introduced me to Rod and he was in the

1750
01:48:51,800 --> 01:48:53,640
Speaker 6: studio and a couple of the records that I was

1751
01:48:53,680 --> 01:48:58,240
Speaker 6: involved with with Quincy, and I was a big fan

1752
01:48:58,840 --> 01:49:02,759
Speaker 6: admirer and Quence. He put us together because he thought

1753
01:49:02,800 --> 01:49:06,519
Speaker 6: that we might hit it off. And even though Rod

1754
01:49:07,640 --> 01:49:14,000
Speaker 6: specifically with his talent was not a classical music I

1755
01:49:14,040 --> 01:49:19,760
Speaker 6: didn't think that much of an influence, but as I

1756
01:49:19,920 --> 01:49:25,600
Speaker 6: was working with him, he just had a whole cinematic,

1757
01:49:26,720 --> 01:49:32,080
Speaker 6: classical way of talking to me, and we hit it

1758
01:49:32,120 --> 01:49:38,360
Speaker 6: off and I was trying to learn from him. I

1759
01:49:38,360 --> 01:49:41,360
Speaker 6: don't think Thriller had I can't remember where he was.

1760
01:49:41,320 --> 01:49:44,360
Speaker 3: And he just finished out The Wall and Thrillers about

1761
01:49:44,400 --> 01:49:45,360
Speaker 3: the kind of the next.

1762
01:49:45,200 --> 01:49:46,719
Speaker 2: Year, Yeah, so big.

1763
01:49:47,160 --> 01:49:49,920
Speaker 6: In other words, kind of out of my league, and

1764
01:49:50,000 --> 01:49:51,800
Speaker 6: I was kind of shocked that he was even willing

1765
01:49:51,840 --> 01:49:54,880
Speaker 6: to spend some time with me. But at least I

1766
01:49:54,920 --> 01:49:57,280
Speaker 6: had a chance to work in studio with him. He

1767
01:49:57,360 --> 01:50:00,559
Speaker 6: had his own complete language of how he talked and

1768
01:50:00,560 --> 01:50:03,879
Speaker 6: how he put together his vocals, and they were totally

1769
01:50:03,880 --> 01:50:07,760
Speaker 6: different from anything that I was aware of, So it

1770
01:50:07,840 --> 01:50:14,120
Speaker 6: was very much a learning process. And the difference, I

1771
01:50:14,160 --> 01:50:19,600
Speaker 6: guess the main difference in the success there was that

1772
01:50:21,320 --> 01:50:23,760
Speaker 6: when he worked with me, he had Bob James and

1773
01:50:23,800 --> 01:50:27,919
Speaker 6: when he worked with Michael Jackson he had Michael Jackson.

1774
01:50:29,640 --> 01:50:32,240
Speaker 2: That kind of says it all. That makes the difference

1775
01:50:32,360 --> 01:50:33,519
Speaker 2: in the success level.

1776
01:50:33,960 --> 01:50:36,840
Speaker 3: I guess you co scored one of my all time

1777
01:50:37,840 --> 01:50:44,160
Speaker 3: favorite films and I didn't realize it until maybe a

1778
01:50:44,240 --> 01:50:47,759
Speaker 3: year and a half ago during the pandemic that you

1779
01:50:47,880 --> 01:50:52,640
Speaker 3: created the King of Comedy score. So can you talk

1780
01:50:52,680 --> 01:50:54,320
Speaker 3: about working with Scorsese and.

1781
01:50:55,280 --> 01:50:58,920
Speaker 6: Well, you're crazy. Where do you get all these details?

1782
01:50:59,280 --> 01:51:02,120
Speaker 2: How do you feel? Well, you know more information than.

1783
01:51:02,760 --> 01:51:07,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, the pandemic happens, and trust me, the pandemic happens.

1784
01:51:07,200 --> 01:51:10,600
Speaker 1: You read all the fine print to keep yourself busy.

1785
01:51:10,600 --> 01:51:13,400
Speaker 6: Ash, I mean, I should have done a lot of

1786
01:51:13,400 --> 01:51:15,040
Speaker 6: homework before I did this.

1787
01:51:16,640 --> 01:51:16,920
Speaker 2: With you.

1788
01:51:17,080 --> 01:51:21,439
Speaker 6: Quest love you know so much. And I got to say,

1789
01:51:22,120 --> 01:51:25,559
Speaker 6: my memories of working on that are so vague in

1790
01:51:25,600 --> 01:51:28,240
Speaker 6: my mind now, I'm not sure that I even remember

1791
01:51:28,280 --> 01:51:29,639
Speaker 6: how to talk about it very much.

1792
01:51:29,920 --> 01:51:32,400
Speaker 1: You just threw it together and just gave it to him.

1793
01:51:32,720 --> 01:51:35,960
Speaker 6: Well, no, I mean I know that I was treating

1794
01:51:35,960 --> 01:51:38,679
Speaker 6: it very seriously at the time that I haven't listened

1795
01:51:38,680 --> 01:51:41,920
Speaker 6: back to it. But it's been twenty twenty five years ago,

1796
01:51:42,080 --> 01:51:50,120
Speaker 6: or at least forty, And when you reach my age,

1797
01:51:50,400 --> 01:51:52,880
Speaker 6: you know how hard it is to keep retaining a

1798
01:51:52,880 --> 01:51:54,960
Speaker 6: lot of those memories. You don't have much of a

1799
01:51:55,000 --> 01:51:59,040
Speaker 6: memory other than the way you described it as a

1800
01:51:59,080 --> 01:52:03,800
Speaker 6: weird film. Made a career assignment for me to make

1801
01:52:03,920 --> 01:52:06,640
Speaker 6: music for it. That's kind of about all I'd be

1802
01:52:06,680 --> 01:52:07,840
Speaker 6: able to say at this point.

1803
01:52:08,200 --> 01:52:09,320
Speaker 2: But do another zoom.

1804
01:52:09,360 --> 01:52:11,920
Speaker 6: I'll do some homework listen to it again and maybe

1805
01:52:11,920 --> 01:52:13,800
Speaker 6: I'll have something more intelligent to say.

1806
01:52:14,520 --> 01:52:17,280
Speaker 3: No, you know, I watch it like maybe five times

1807
01:52:17,280 --> 01:52:20,519
Speaker 3: a year, so for me, like I like when dark

1808
01:52:20,600 --> 01:52:23,960
Speaker 3: films have light music scores because it makes it even darker.

1809
01:52:24,320 --> 01:52:30,080
Speaker 6: So it contributes to the power, I think, rather than

1810
01:52:30,200 --> 01:52:33,160
Speaker 6: everything be dark as too obvious.

1811
01:52:33,439 --> 01:52:35,880
Speaker 3: Right, you're right, this is sort of on the same level.

1812
01:52:36,600 --> 01:52:39,880
Speaker 3: But so I used to work in a record store

1813
01:52:40,040 --> 01:52:43,880
Speaker 3: back in high school, and this is right when you

1814
01:52:44,320 --> 01:52:50,960
Speaker 3: and David Sanborn started your collaboration process. I think this

1815
01:52:51,240 --> 01:52:54,600
Speaker 3: was maybe this is the Double Vision album, but I

1816
01:52:54,800 --> 01:52:58,880
Speaker 3: just got to know this, you guys. Fade you guys,

1817
01:52:59,000 --> 01:53:03,840
Speaker 3: fade Algebra's voice right when he's about to start scatting

1818
01:53:03,880 --> 01:53:08,360
Speaker 3: like a madman on since I fail for you, and

1819
01:53:09,479 --> 01:53:12,719
Speaker 3: every time I hear it, like I'm now a collector

1820
01:53:12,760 --> 01:53:15,920
Speaker 3: of pro tools and whatnot, you know, Like I like

1821
01:53:15,960 --> 01:53:18,679
Speaker 3: hearing the original versions in its dry state and see

1822
01:53:18,680 --> 01:53:23,760
Speaker 3: what happens after the fate. But how long do you

1823
01:53:23,800 --> 01:53:25,880
Speaker 3: have any memory of how long that song goes on

1824
01:53:26,080 --> 01:53:29,120
Speaker 3: after the fade? Because right when the fade goes down,

1825
01:53:29,160 --> 01:53:33,120
Speaker 3: that's when like Algio just starts scatting out of his mind.

1826
01:53:33,320 --> 01:53:36,880
Speaker 3: And I always wanted to know what happens after that fad.

1827
01:53:37,760 --> 01:53:42,120
Speaker 6: Well, I can say that I was probably not there

1828
01:53:42,240 --> 01:53:46,599
Speaker 6: in the mix and the choice. I don't remember being there.

1829
01:53:46,680 --> 01:53:49,240
Speaker 6: I didn't produce that. I mean, it was my albums,

1830
01:53:49,400 --> 01:53:55,040
Speaker 6: my name on it, all right, but that fade. Usually

1831
01:53:55,280 --> 01:53:58,800
Speaker 6: I would have been very involved and very specifically with

1832
01:53:59,120 --> 01:54:01,200
Speaker 6: the last thing that you want people to hear, and

1833
01:54:01,240 --> 01:54:02,679
Speaker 6: you want it to be hot.

1834
01:54:03,040 --> 01:54:06,400
Speaker 2: You want it to be and I think the fade.

1835
01:54:06,040 --> 01:54:09,040
Speaker 6: Works just in the way you described it, because it

1836
01:54:09,160 --> 01:54:11,639
Speaker 6: left you wanting more, and it left it when it's

1837
01:54:11,640 --> 01:54:15,559
Speaker 6: at its most hot. What I would say about that

1838
01:54:15,640 --> 01:54:22,120
Speaker 6: record to you is that I'm very proud of the

1839
01:54:22,200 --> 01:54:27,519
Speaker 6: pre production and arranging and scoring that I did, which

1840
01:54:27,680 --> 01:54:34,320
Speaker 6: is would have been a conventional string orchestra and brass

1841
01:54:34,360 --> 01:54:38,640
Speaker 6: and whatever, but I chose to do it with my

1842
01:54:39,280 --> 01:54:44,760
Speaker 6: home studio equipment. And it's all the strings, all the horns,

1843
01:54:44,920 --> 01:54:50,600
Speaker 6: everything else are me synthesizers. And many people give me

1844
01:54:50,680 --> 01:54:52,880
Speaker 6: credit that when they hear it it sounds like a

1845
01:54:52,920 --> 01:54:55,200
Speaker 6: full large orchestra of production.

1846
01:54:56,040 --> 01:54:59,440
Speaker 2: But I had an otari a track.

1847
01:54:59,680 --> 01:55:02,120
Speaker 6: And this was in the era when you had the

1848
01:55:02,240 --> 01:55:05,560
Speaker 6: multi track studio or whatever in the studio and then

1849
01:55:05,560 --> 01:55:08,680
Speaker 6: you had to bounce down in order to do the overdub.

1850
01:55:08,760 --> 01:55:11,680
Speaker 6: So I took Bill say, I guess it was made

1851
01:55:11,720 --> 01:55:16,280
Speaker 6: a pre mix bouncing down and all of the basic

1852
01:55:16,360 --> 01:55:17,000
Speaker 6: tracks were on.

1853
01:55:18,080 --> 01:55:20,200
Speaker 2: He gave me four tracks or something like that to

1854
01:55:20,240 --> 01:55:21,560
Speaker 2: work with, and I.

1855
01:55:22,560 --> 01:55:26,360
Speaker 6: Created the woodwinds, the French horns and springs and all

1856
01:55:26,400 --> 01:55:31,200
Speaker 6: that were synthesized. And the part that I loved the

1857
01:55:31,240 --> 01:55:35,880
Speaker 6: most was in that exact section you're talking about, where

1858
01:55:35,920 --> 01:55:41,320
Speaker 6: he goes or something like that, and I scored it

1859
01:55:41,680 --> 01:55:45,320
Speaker 6: for the horns going in. The French horns echo that line.

1860
01:55:45,920 --> 01:55:48,280
Speaker 6: And because I had the rough mix that I was

1861
01:55:49,200 --> 01:55:52,080
Speaker 6: from that had his vocal already on it when I

1862
01:55:52,120 --> 01:55:54,520
Speaker 6: was working on my scoring, I was able to actually

1863
01:55:54,720 --> 01:55:58,240
Speaker 6: write the orchestration after the fact to make it sound

1864
01:55:58,320 --> 01:56:01,400
Speaker 6: like al was responding to the orchestra.

1865
01:56:01,880 --> 01:56:04,120
Speaker 1: So right, okay, but those.

1866
01:56:03,920 --> 01:56:07,360
Speaker 6: French horns were not there when he's sang it, so

1867
01:56:07,360 --> 01:56:10,600
Speaker 6: so I added the French horns before, so it make

1868
01:56:10,680 --> 01:56:13,560
Speaker 6: it sound like he was ad living to my orchestration.

1869
01:56:14,080 --> 01:56:15,520
Speaker 2: And if I do.

1870
01:56:15,520 --> 01:56:17,920
Speaker 3: This sort of like Steve Gadd's rumming. See now, now

1871
01:56:17,960 --> 01:56:21,240
Speaker 3: I realized the same exact approach. Yeah, the power the

1872
01:56:21,280 --> 01:56:23,960
Speaker 3: power of post production. Now that's that's the lesson I

1873
01:56:24,040 --> 01:56:26,640
Speaker 3: learned today. No, that was at the time when I

1874
01:56:26,680 --> 01:56:31,480
Speaker 3: was working at that record store. I think Moonlighting, Bruce

1875
01:56:31,480 --> 01:56:36,040
Speaker 3: Willison Sybil Shepherd's uh show, very popular show on ABC,

1876
01:56:36,920 --> 01:56:41,880
Speaker 3: had just started using that song. So suddenly a whole

1877
01:56:42,720 --> 01:56:44,240
Speaker 3: that was back in the day when like a show

1878
01:56:44,360 --> 01:56:46,680
Speaker 3: like that could feature a song, and then suddenly everybody's

1879
01:56:46,720 --> 01:56:50,800
Speaker 3: coming in requesting it. And yeah, when that that came out,

1880
01:56:51,000 --> 01:56:53,920
Speaker 3: just the whole world just started asking for Since I

1881
01:56:54,120 --> 01:56:56,840
Speaker 3: you know, fell for you that that uh that cover,

1882
01:56:56,960 --> 01:56:58,520
Speaker 3: so always want to do.

1883
01:56:58,520 --> 01:57:04,880
Speaker 6: That tables and ask you uh one question and yeah, absolutely,

1884
01:57:05,080 --> 01:57:09,040
Speaker 6: since I have the opportunity. Yeah, this is hypothetical only

1885
01:57:09,760 --> 01:57:14,440
Speaker 6: so since you nor I are kind of session players

1886
01:57:14,520 --> 01:57:19,520
Speaker 6: these days. But if we were in New York session players.

1887
01:57:19,360 --> 01:57:20,200
Speaker 1: Yes, let's do it.

1888
01:57:20,520 --> 01:57:24,880
Speaker 6: And there's a trio date that we were called upon

1889
01:57:25,120 --> 01:57:29,560
Speaker 6: to do, and you had me hell looking for a

1890
01:57:29,600 --> 01:57:34,160
Speaker 6: bass player. Who would you recommend do a trio date

1891
01:57:34,840 --> 01:57:37,960
Speaker 6: with with you on piano and me on drums?

1892
01:57:38,040 --> 01:57:42,560
Speaker 1: I mean the or we to do that? We I

1893
01:57:42,560 --> 01:57:45,080
Speaker 1: would actually let's.

1894
01:57:44,960 --> 01:57:47,640
Speaker 4: See who Derek hadge.

1895
01:57:48,760 --> 01:57:52,880
Speaker 8: I would say either Hajj or I would actually go

1896
01:57:52,920 --> 01:57:58,120
Speaker 8: with Pino of course, Yeah, I would go with Pino.

1897
01:57:58,720 --> 01:58:02,200
Speaker 8: Derek Hodge can go with Christian Mcbriene McBride. But Pino,

1898
01:58:02,520 --> 01:58:05,440
Speaker 8: you know, I like, I've worked.

1899
01:58:05,160 --> 01:58:08,360
Speaker 6: With you know a little bit many years ago, and

1900
01:58:08,520 --> 01:58:10,920
Speaker 6: Christian McBride I did an album with, so that could

1901
01:58:10,920 --> 01:58:11,120
Speaker 6: be that.

1902
01:58:11,200 --> 01:58:14,120
Speaker 2: But the Pino is more on your knowledge since you've

1903
01:58:14,520 --> 01:58:15,800
Speaker 2: worked with them. Let's go with that.

1904
01:58:16,360 --> 01:58:18,240
Speaker 1: Are you are you committed to a label right now?

1905
01:58:18,800 --> 01:58:20,600
Speaker 2: Top and Z I will do it.

1906
01:58:21,600 --> 01:58:24,800
Speaker 4: I got to say, I'm sorry, this is I have

1907
01:58:24,840 --> 01:58:26,360
Speaker 4: to cut in here because I have my own jazz

1908
01:58:26,440 --> 01:58:30,560
Speaker 4: label here as well. Uh thanks, thanks partially to my

1909
01:58:30,640 --> 01:58:35,520
Speaker 4: love for Tap and Z and and uh we can

1910
01:58:35,560 --> 01:58:38,800
Speaker 4: go co co on that if you're if you're interested.

1911
01:58:38,840 --> 01:58:42,000
Speaker 2: But I was only joking about Z. It's it's kind

1912
01:58:42,000 --> 01:58:42,680
Speaker 2: of let's.

1913
01:58:42,520 --> 01:58:46,760
Speaker 4: Bring it back, man, let's bring it back. JM I.

1914
01:58:46,760 --> 01:58:49,160
Speaker 1: I'm signed as d M I for all my jazz stuff.

1915
01:58:49,200 --> 01:58:51,080
Speaker 1: So I got to ask my label president right here.

1916
01:58:51,160 --> 01:58:54,760
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're good for We're good for a

1917
01:58:54,760 --> 01:58:57,520
Speaker 4: Bob James Pinal question. Yes, we'll sign on for that.

1918
01:58:57,600 --> 01:59:00,240
Speaker 1: We are absolutely going to do that. You and I'm

1919
01:59:00,280 --> 01:59:01,400
Speaker 1: not doing that like fake.

1920
01:59:01,520 --> 01:59:04,360
Speaker 3: You heard it here first, people No, we're making I'm

1921
01:59:04,360 --> 01:59:06,840
Speaker 3: telling you, I got so much envy when I saw

1922
01:59:07,720 --> 01:59:11,240
Speaker 3: that clip at Blue Mine, and then you know I

1923
01:59:11,320 --> 01:59:15,200
Speaker 3: was working all weeks. So but no, you're You're a

1924
01:59:15,200 --> 01:59:18,600
Speaker 3: favorite of mine, and you know I thank you for

1925
01:59:18,680 --> 01:59:21,200
Speaker 3: letting us nerd out on you for two hours.

1926
01:59:21,520 --> 01:59:23,520
Speaker 1: Yes, we will make this happen.

1927
01:59:24,000 --> 01:59:26,680
Speaker 2: Yay, yay, Okay, I hope that was recorded.

1928
01:59:27,240 --> 01:59:28,879
Speaker 1: Yes, it's absolutely recorded.

1929
01:59:29,240 --> 01:59:32,240
Speaker 3: You can sue me if I renigg on on on

1930
01:59:32,240 --> 01:59:35,680
Speaker 3: on this on this audio contract.

1931
01:59:36,000 --> 01:59:36,480
Speaker 6: Let's do it.

1932
01:59:36,600 --> 01:59:39,320
Speaker 2: Soon because of the age factor, so we don't.

1933
01:59:39,760 --> 01:59:42,040
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know if I have much time left.

1934
01:59:42,080 --> 01:59:43,000
Speaker 1: So yes, I will do it.

1935
01:59:43,080 --> 01:59:45,680
Speaker 3: You will be here forever, trust me, Steve. I'll leave

1936
01:59:45,720 --> 01:59:47,520
Speaker 3: you with the last question. Then I'm signed out.

1937
01:59:47,680 --> 01:59:50,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, last question. Whose idea was it to name the

1938
01:59:50,600 --> 01:59:53,480
Speaker 4: first for Bob James albums one, two, three, four, because

1939
01:59:53,480 --> 01:59:57,240
Speaker 4: we're modeling Ray Angry's catalog after that on our label.

1940
01:59:57,280 --> 02:00:00,200
Speaker 4: But was that preconceived or did you just do that

1941
02:00:00,240 --> 02:00:00,720
Speaker 4: as it went on?

1942
02:00:00,880 --> 02:00:03,400
Speaker 6: I think Cree Taylor's idea and the way he explained

1943
02:00:03,400 --> 02:00:05,800
Speaker 6: it to me at that time, because we were very

1944
02:00:05,800 --> 02:00:10,840
Speaker 6: aware of Chicago, the group Chicago had done talk about

1945
02:00:10,840 --> 02:00:14,040
Speaker 6: it a lot and the way I remember Creed thinking

1946
02:00:14,080 --> 02:00:18,480
Speaker 6: about it strategically was that. And this was nice that

1947
02:00:18,560 --> 02:00:22,000
Speaker 6: he was thinking that I might have longevity. But if

1948
02:00:22,000 --> 02:00:24,520
Speaker 6: you name if, if you name it that way, you

1949
02:00:24,560 --> 02:00:27,760
Speaker 6: get to your album five and the people are fans,

1950
02:00:28,400 --> 02:00:30,520
Speaker 6: they know that they got four that they have to.

1951
02:00:30,520 --> 02:00:33,600
Speaker 4: Collect, so collect the.

1952
02:00:33,520 --> 02:00:35,720
Speaker 2: More records you make, and I did have.

1953
02:00:35,760 --> 02:00:37,960
Speaker 6: It happened to me that after I got up to

1954
02:00:38,040 --> 02:00:42,360
Speaker 6: ten or whatever, that the avid fans know what they

1955
02:00:42,400 --> 02:00:44,360
Speaker 6: have to look for that, oh I don't have eight

1956
02:00:44,480 --> 02:00:47,000
Speaker 6: or I don't have And I heard him talking about that,

1957
02:00:47,080 --> 02:00:50,040
Speaker 6: but that was that was what was in his mind.

1958
02:00:50,360 --> 02:00:52,640
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you for it.

1959
02:00:53,200 --> 02:00:55,120
Speaker 6: Do you have time for me to tell you one

1960
02:00:55,120 --> 02:00:58,720
Speaker 6: more little thing, because yes, you and I encountered each

1961
02:00:58,760 --> 02:01:01,760
Speaker 6: other when I came in the middle of your back

1962
02:01:01,800 --> 02:01:03,960
Speaker 6: and forth thing that you had going with Bis Marquis

1963
02:01:04,560 --> 02:01:05,400
Speaker 6: about the bells.

1964
02:01:05,680 --> 02:01:07,120
Speaker 1: Damn, I forgot about the bells.

1965
02:01:07,560 --> 02:01:09,920
Speaker 3: Sure that he's no longer with us, can you just

1966
02:01:09,960 --> 02:01:13,240
Speaker 3: release a copy of PI Peter Piper without the bells?

1967
02:01:13,800 --> 02:01:15,720
Speaker 2: Well, here's what I wanted to tell you.

1968
02:01:15,840 --> 02:01:18,600
Speaker 6: I did a little round table at the Blue Note

1969
02:01:19,600 --> 02:01:23,240
Speaker 6: with some hip hop guys and we had a surprise

1970
02:01:23,320 --> 02:01:27,080
Speaker 6: for them because my engineer, David, we had gone out

1971
02:01:27,080 --> 02:01:30,840
Speaker 6: to Iron Mountain to check out my master recordings, the

1972
02:01:30,920 --> 02:01:36,280
Speaker 6: multi tracks and so, and got the multi tracks from

1973
02:01:36,400 --> 02:01:41,160
Speaker 6: those sessions for that album Take Me to Marti Gras,

1974
02:01:41,360 --> 02:01:45,680
Speaker 6: And we have an outtake of a different take of

1975
02:01:45,720 --> 02:01:48,000
Speaker 6: Taking Me to the Marti Gras that David made a

1976
02:01:48,040 --> 02:01:50,640
Speaker 6: rough mix that played it for these guys at the

1977
02:01:50,720 --> 02:01:56,360
Speaker 6: roundtable that nobody had heard before, and it's got the

1978
02:01:56,400 --> 02:01:58,480
Speaker 6: bells on there. But I have the multi tracks and

1979
02:01:58,560 --> 02:02:00,800
Speaker 6: I could do whatever I want. And when I went

1980
02:02:00,840 --> 02:02:03,200
Speaker 6: to Iron Mountain to check them out to make sure

1981
02:02:03,240 --> 02:02:06,280
Speaker 6: that the multi tracks were still in good shape, I

1982
02:02:06,320 --> 02:02:08,240
Speaker 6: was able to sit at the console and push a

1983
02:02:08,280 --> 02:02:10,160
Speaker 6: solo button and hear.

1984
02:02:10,120 --> 02:02:11,800
Speaker 2: Boom boom boom boom boom.

1985
02:02:13,600 --> 02:02:13,880
Speaker 1: Wow.

1986
02:02:15,160 --> 02:02:18,040
Speaker 2: Uh. And it's a different a little bit different groove

1987
02:02:18,280 --> 02:02:18,880
Speaker 2: and play.

1988
02:02:19,000 --> 02:02:22,640
Speaker 6: I played the melody differently, different keyboard solo in the middle,

1989
02:02:22,880 --> 02:02:25,320
Speaker 6: and of course it doesn't have any other production than

1990
02:02:25,360 --> 02:02:27,680
Speaker 6: any of the strings all that other stuff.

1991
02:02:27,720 --> 02:02:28,480
Speaker 2: Because he's out.

1992
02:02:28,920 --> 02:02:31,520
Speaker 1: I do have a question, but just a bonus question.

1993
02:02:32,360 --> 02:02:35,000
Speaker 3: You you have a tendency to use a lot of

1994
02:02:35,160 --> 02:02:39,880
Speaker 3: sound effects on your What's the purpose of that, because

1995
02:02:39,920 --> 02:02:43,120
Speaker 3: even with take Me to the Mani Gras, and even

1996
02:02:43,160 --> 02:02:46,920
Speaker 3: with Alley of the Shadows, Like, what was the purpose

1997
02:02:46,920 --> 02:02:50,000
Speaker 3: in using those like sound effect records on top of

1998
02:02:50,040 --> 02:02:52,240
Speaker 3: the music cinematic?

1999
02:02:52,400 --> 02:02:55,320
Speaker 6: I don't know that we were even that specific about it.

2000
02:02:55,360 --> 02:02:59,320
Speaker 6: But the atmosphere with Take Me to the Marti grad

2001
02:02:59,320 --> 02:03:01,920
Speaker 6: we were trying to create the party in New Orleans

2002
02:03:02,000 --> 02:03:04,840
Speaker 6: kind of an atmosphere. So that was that one was

2003
02:03:04,840 --> 02:03:05,440
Speaker 6: pretty clear.

2004
02:03:05,520 --> 02:03:10,720
Speaker 1: But which animal sounds No, I don't know. It just

2005
02:03:10,760 --> 02:03:12,400
Speaker 1: like this sounds like a bunch of sheep in the

2006
02:03:12,440 --> 02:03:13,320
Speaker 1: background or something.

2007
02:03:13,360 --> 02:03:16,920
Speaker 4: But it sounds it sounds like they were just having fun,

2008
02:03:17,320 --> 02:03:19,360
Speaker 4: is what. It sounds like a lot On Chapanzee, they

2009
02:03:19,440 --> 02:03:20,880
Speaker 4: use a lot of sound effects on tap and z

2010
02:03:21,040 --> 02:03:22,800
Speaker 4: and it's just you know, you can tell they're just

2011
02:03:22,800 --> 02:03:23,560
Speaker 4: having a blast.

2012
02:03:23,920 --> 02:03:27,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're gonna have new sound effects that we'll be able.

2013
02:03:27,200 --> 02:03:27,640
Speaker 4: To do with it.

2014
02:03:28,280 --> 02:03:29,400
Speaker 1: Let's make it happen.

2015
02:03:30,640 --> 02:03:33,920
Speaker 4: We're all analog though, so bring your analog thoughts.

2016
02:03:34,320 --> 02:03:35,440
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll do this.

2017
02:03:35,640 --> 02:03:39,720
Speaker 3: So on Behalf of Sick Steve Laya fon Diicgelo and

2018
02:03:39,760 --> 02:03:42,360
Speaker 3: on Paid Bill. This is Quest Love talking to the

2019
02:03:42,400 --> 02:03:48,360
Speaker 3: great Immortal Bob James, my my future collaborator. Yeah, We're gon,

2020
02:03:48,520 --> 02:03:51,000
Speaker 3: We're gonna do this project and up your grammy count.

2021
02:03:51,320 --> 02:03:54,000
Speaker 3: I'm calling it right now. This is Quest Love Supreme,

2022
02:03:54,080 --> 02:03:57,720
Speaker 3: one of the dude. This NERD's paradise right now and

2023
02:03:57,840 --> 02:03:59,920
Speaker 3: I'm happy and I'll see you guys on the next.

2024
02:04:00,440 --> 02:04:12,560
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme Zeo. West Love Supreme is a production

2025
02:04:12,760 --> 02:04:13,960
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.

2026
02:04:17,720 --> 02:04:22,120
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

2027
02:04:22,600 --> 02:04:24,280
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.